On Oct 4, 1:13 pm, Kelie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > hello, > > i've spent couple of hours trying to figure out the correct regular > expression to catch a VisualLisp (it is for AutoCAD and has a syntax > that's similar to common lisp) function body. VisualLisp is case- > insensitive. Any line beginning with ";" is for comment (can have > space(s) before ";"). > > here is an example of VisualLisp function: > > (defun get_obj_app_names (obj / rv) > (foreach app (get_registered_apps (vla-get-document obj)) > (if (get_xdata obj app) > (setq rv (cons app rv)) > ) > ) > (if rv > ;;"This line is comment (comment)" > ;;) This line is also comment > (acad_strlsort rv) > nil > ) > ) > > for a function named foo, it is easy to find the beginning part of the > function > "(defun foo", but it is hard to find the ")" at the end of code block. > if eventually i can't come up with the solution using regular > expression only, what i was thinking is after finding the beginning > part, which is "(defun foo" in this case, i can count the parenthesis, > ignoring anything inside "" and any line for comment, until i find the > closing ")". > > not sure if i've made myself understood. thanks for reading. > > kelie
So, paren matching is a canonical context-sensitive algorithm. Now, many regex libraries have *some* not-purely-regular features, but I doubt your going to find anything to match parens in a single regex. If you want to go all out you can use a parser generator (for python parser generators, see http://python.fyxm.net/topics/parsing.html). Otherwise, you can go about it the quick-and-dirty way you describe: scan for matching open and close parens, and ignore things in quotes and comments. -Dan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
