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@rauschma
Last active December 1, 2022 20:48
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import assert from 'node:assert/strict';
// Extended RegExp mode (flag /x) [1] via a template tag
//
// Quote: “While the x-mode flag can be used in a RegularExpressionLiteral,
// it does not permit the use of LineTerminator in RegularExpressonLiteral.
// For multi-line regular expressions you would need to use the RegExp
// constructor.”
//
// The plan is to include this functionality in re-template-tag [2]. Then
// this template tag does four things at the same time:
//
// 1. Escaping substituted strings
// 2. Including substituted RegExps
// 3. Multi-line RegExp literals
// 4. Extended mode (only need until JS RegExps have the flag /x)
//
// [1] https://github.com/tc39/proposal-regexp-x-mode
// [2] https://github.com/rauschma/re-template-tag
function rex(templateStrings, ...substitutions) {
let str = String.raw(templateStrings, ...substitutions);
// Alas, Safari doesn’t support negative lookbehind, so this code is more
// complicated than I’d like.
// Line comment characters must be escaped or inside character classes.
// To permit the latter, I’m currently disallowing square brackets in
// line comments.
str = str.replaceAll(/(^|[^\\])#[^\[\]]*$/gm, '$1');
// All whitespace must be escaped (even within character classes).
// Sadly, Safari doesn’t support negative lookbehind, so:
str = str.replaceAll(/(^|[^\\])\s+/g, '$1');
// I ignore flags in this experiment
return new RegExp(str);
}
//===== Examples =====
const { raw } = String;
assert.deepEqual(
rex`
[0-9]{4} # year
[0-9]{2} # month
[0-9]{2} # day
`,
/[0-9]{4}[0-9]{2}[0-9]{2}/
);
// JavaScript RegExps are fine with escaping hashes
assert.deepEqual(
rex`
\# escaped_hash
[#] escaped_hash
`,
/\#escaped_hash[#]escaped_hash/
);
// JavaScript RegExps are fine with escaping spaces
assert.deepEqual(
rex`escaping\ spaces`,
/escaping\ spaces/
);
// JavaScript RegExps are fine with escaping carriage returns
const ESCAPED_CR = '\\\r';
assert.deepEqual(
rex`escaping${ESCAPED_CR}carriage_returns`,
new RegExp(raw`escaping${ESCAPED_CR}carriage_returns`)
);
// JavaScript RegExps are fine with escaping linefeeds
const ESCAPED_LF = '\\\n';
assert.deepEqual(
rex`escaping${ESCAPED_LF}linefeeds`,
new RegExp(raw`escaping${ESCAPED_LF}linefeeds`)
);
@GeoffreyBooth
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Looks like you just reimplemented this: https://coffeescript.org/#regexes. You could compare your regexes to the ones in the source code for that.

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