Table of Contents

1 Motivation

The core facility for string matching in Prolog is provided by DCG (Definite Clause Grammars). Using DCGs is typically more verbose but gives reuse, modularity, readability and mixing with arbitrary Prolog code in return. Supporting regular expressions has some advantages: (1) in simple cases the terse specification of a regular expression is more comfortable, (2) many programmers are familar with them and (3) regular expressions are part of domain specific languages one may wish to implement in Prolog, e.g., SPARQL.

There are roughly three options for adding regular expressions to Prolog. One is to simply interpret them in Prolog. Given Prolog's unification and backtracking facilities this is remarkable simple and performs quite reasonable. Still, the implementing all facilities of modern regular expression engines requires significant effort. Alternatively, we can compile them into DCGs. This brings terse expressions to DCGs while staying in the same framework. The disadvantage is that regular expressions become programs that are hard to reclaim, making this approach less attractive for applications that potentially execute many different regular expressions. The final option is to wrap an existing regular expression engine. This provides access to a robust implementation for which we only have to document the Prolog binding. That is the option taken by library library(pcre).

2 library(pcre): Perl compatible regular expression matching for SWI-Prolog

See also

‘man pcre` for details.

This module provides an interface to the PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) library. This Prolog interface provides an almost comprehensive wrapper around PCRE.

Regular expressions are created from a pattern and options and represented as a SWI-Prolog blob. This implies they are subject to (atom) garbage collection. Compiled regular expressions can safely be used in multiple threads. Most predicates accept both an explicitly compiled regular expression, a pattern or a term Pattern/Flags. In the latter two cases a regular expression blob is created and stored in a cache. The cache can be cleared using re_flush/0.

[semidet]re_match(+Regex, +String)

[semidet]re_match(+Regex, +String, +Options)

Succeeds if String matches Regex. For example:

?- re_match("^needle"/i, "Needle in a haystack").
true.

Options:

anchored(Bool)

If true, match only at the first position

bol(Bool)

Subject string is the beginning of a line (default false)

bsr(Mode)

If anycrlf, \R only matches CR, LF or CRLF. If unicode, \R matches all Unicode line endings. Subject string is the end of a line (default false)

empty(Bool)

An empty string is a valid match (default true)

empty_atstart(Bool)

An empty string at the start of the subject is a valid match (default true)

eol(Bool)

Subject string is the end of a line (default false)

newline(Mode)

If any, recognize any Unicode newline sequence, if anycrlf, recognize CR, LF, and CRLF as newline sequences, if cr, recognize CR, if lf, recognize LF and finally if crlf recognize CRLF as newline.

start(+From)

Start at the given character index

Regex

is the output of re_compile/3, a pattern or a term Pattern/Flags, where Pattern is an atom or string. The defined flags and there related option for re_compile/3 are below. x: extended(true) i: caseless(true) m: multiline(true) s: dotall(true) a: capture_type(atom) r: capture_type(range) t: capture_type(term)

[semidet]re_matchsub(+Regex, +String, -Sub:dict, +Options)

Match String against Regex. On success, Sub is a dict containing integer keys for the numbered capture group and atom keys for the named capture groups. The associated value is determined by the capture_type(Type) option passed to re_compile/3, may be specified using flags if Regex is of the form Pattern/Flags and may be specified at the level of individual captures using a naming convention for the caption name. See re_compile/3 for details.

The example below exploits the typed groups to parse a date specification:

?- re_matchsub("(?<date> (?<year_I>(?:\\d\\d)?\\d\\d) -
                (?<month_I>\\d\\d) - (?<day_I>\\d\\d) )"/e,
               "2017-04-20", Sub, []).
Sub = re_match{0:"2017-04-20", date:"2017-04-20",
               day:20, month:4, year:2017}.

Options	Only execution options are processed. See re_match/3 for the set of options. Compilation options must be passed as‘/flags` to Regex.
Regex	See re_match/2 for a description of this argument.

[semidet]re_foldl(:Goal, +Regex, +String, ?V0, ?V, +Options)

Fold all matches of Regex on String. Each match is represented by a dict as specified for re_matchsub/4. V0 and V are related using a sequence of invocations of Goal as illustrated below.

call(Goal, Dict1, V0, V1),
call(Goal, Dict2, V1, V2),
...
call(Goal, Dictn, Vn, V).

This predicate is used to implement re_split/4 and re_replace/4. For example, we can count all matches of a Regex on String using this code:

re_match_count(Regex, String, Count) :-
    re_foldl(increment, Regex, String, 0, Count, []).

increment(_Match, V0, V1) :-
    V1 is V0+1.

After which we can query

?- re_match_count("a", "aap", X).
X = 2.

[det]re_split(+Pattern, +String, -Split:list)

[det]re_split(+Pattern, +String, -Split:list, +Options)

Split String using the regular expression Pattern. Split is a list of strings holding alternating matches of Pattern and skipped parts of the String, starting with a skipped part. The Split lists ends with a string of the content of String after the last match. If Pattern does not appear in String, Split is a list holding a copy of String. This implies the number of elements in Split is always odd. For example:

?- re_split("a+", "abaac", Split, []).
Split = ["","a","b","aa","c"].
?- re_split(":\\s*"/n, "Age: 33", Split, []).
Split = ['Age', ': ', 33].

Pattern

is the pattern text, optionally follows by /Flags. Similar to re_matchsub/4, the final output type can be controlled by a flag a (atom), s (string, default) or n (number if possible, atom otherwise).

re_replace(+Pattern, +With, +String, -NewString)

Replace matches of the regular expression Pattern in String with With. With may reference captured substrings using \N or $Name. Both N and Name may be written as {N} and {Name} to avoid ambiguities.

Pattern

is the pattern text, optionally follows by /Flags. Flags may include g, replacing all occurences of Pattern. In addition, similar to re_matchsub/4, the final output type can be controlled by a flag a (atom) or s (string, default).

[det]re_compile(+Pattern, -Regex, +Options)

Compiles Pattern to a Regex blob of type regex (see blob/2). Defined Options are defined below. Please consult the PCRE documentation for details.

anchored(Bool)

Force pattern anchoring

bsr(Mode)

If anycrlf, \R only matches CR, LF or CRLF. If unicode, \R matches all Unicode line endings.

caseless(Bool)

If true, do caseless matching.

dollar_endonly(Bool)

If true, $ not to match newline at end

dotall(Bool)

If true, . matches anything including NL

dupnames(Bool)

If true, allow duplicate names for subpatterns

extended(Bool)

If true, ignore white space and # comments

extra(Bool)

If true, PCRE extra features (not much use currently)

firstline(Bool)

If true, force matching to be before newline

compat(With)

If javascript, JavaScript compatibility

multiline(Bool)

If true, ^ and $ match newlines within data

newline(Mode)

If any, recognize any Unicode newline sequence, if anycrlf (default), recognize CR, LF, and CRLF as newline sequences, if cr, recognize CR, if lf, recognize LF and finally if crlf recognize CRLF as newline.

ucp(Bool)

If true, use Unicode properties for \d, \w, etc.

ungreedy(Bool)

If true, invert greediness of quantifiers

In addition to the options above that directly map to pcre flags the following options are processed:

optimize(Bool)

If true, study the regular expression.

capture_type(+Type)

How to return the matched part of the input and possibly captured groups in there. Possible values are:

string

Return the captured string as a string (default).

atom

Return the captured string as an atom.

range

Return the captured string as a pair Start-Length. Note the we use Start-Length` rather than the more conventional Start-End to allow for immediate use with sub_atom/5 and sub_string/5.

term

Parse the captured string as a Prolog term. This is notably practical if you capture a number.

The capture_type specifies the default for this pattern. The interface supports a different type for each named group using the syntax (?<name_T>...), where T is one of S (string), A (atom), I (integer), F (float), N (number), T (term) and R (range). In the current implementation I, F and N are synonyms for T. Future versions may act different if the parsed value is not of the requested numeric type.

re_flush

Clean pattern and replacement caches.

To be done

Flush automatically if the cache becomes too large.

re_config(+Term)

Extract configuration information from the pcre library. Term is of the form Name(Value). Name is derived from the PCRE_CONFIG_* constant after removing =PCRE_CONFIG_= and mapping the name to lower case, e.g. utf8, unicode_properties, etc. Value is either a Prolog boolean, integer or atom.

Finally, the functionality of pcre_version() is available using the configuration name version.

See also

‘man pcreapi` for details

Index

?

re_compile/3

re_config/1

re_flush/0

re_foldl/6

re_match/2

re_match/3

re_matchsub/4

re_replace/4

re_split/3

re_split/4