I'm wondering if Perl6's new regex can be applied to non-string things. I seem to recall A5 mentioning something about strings tied to array implementations; but I'm wanting something a little more powerful.
A bit of context: I use Perl for verification of big complex ASICs. We run a simulation and get a waveform database (stores values of each signal over time). We can then perform queries on that database to check verious properties. Example: I want to find any occasions where the bus is requested twice in a row, without an intervening grant signal. Its a fairly simple query to implement; but it is, in fact , a regular expresssions. So I would like to write (pseudo-code): my @violations = ($waveform_database =~ m:any/ <bus_request> <not bus_grant>* <bus_request and not bus_grant> /); I can think of a number of ways of implementing this (one is to first create a string by iterating the database and mapping each signal to a bit in the [ascii?] value of a character, and then defining character classes -- though I'd not want to lose the timestamps); but will Perl6 make my life any easier when I write the module? I'm not trying to implement a full CTL* formal property checker; just something that lets me run queries on an existing simulation trace (which is an object). Ultimately, it would be nice to define an entire protocol as a grammer -- the signal trace either conforms, or doesn't (in which case I get the violations). Dave. -- Dave Whipp, Senior Verification Engineer, Fast-Chip inc., 950 Kifer Rd, Sunnyvale, CA. 94086 tel: 408 523 8071; http://www.fast-chip.com Opinions my own; statements of fact may be in error.
