(This may be OT, as I'm not sure what the list's policy is on this kind of
thing, but I'm just tryin' to help, so I'll give it a shot.)
In light of the vast number of questions we get on the list about the
brokenness of the regular expression engine in CF, I've created a CFX tag
that uses the PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) engine[1] to do
regex Find()s. I don't have the Replace() functionality coded yet, as I
want to get some feedback on the utility of such a beast. (Specifically,
whether or not a Replace() functionality would be worth the effort.) No
more shelling out to Perl to do your regex work. Cool, huh?
I've done some limited testing already myself and gotten it to a point where
it seems to work (and is frelling fast, as near as I can tell), but I'd like
to make it available to the developer community for alpha testing. If you'd
like to test it, just drop me a quick email (off-list, please!) and I'll
send you the ZIP file.
There is but one catch: there is, of course, absolutely no documentation.
But, I'll include a sample file to get anyone started.
Thanks,
-Rick
(P.S. - For my next trick, I'm thinking of just going whole-hog and
embedding a Perl interpreter into a CFX tag. Just for grins. Can you say
Perl and CF living side-by-side in real time? Coolio.)
[1] If you don't know what the PCRE is, just think of it like this: The
whole point of the PCRE is to completely emulate/mirror Perl's regex engine.
In other words, anything you can do in Perl, you can do in the PCRE. For
more info see:
ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/
---
To eliminate some questions that I know will be asked ...
Q: Why don't [I] just make a web page and make it available for download?
A; It is *very* alpha quality. It is stable, but has not undergone
satisfactory testing. I don't want people emailing me a year from now
because they found a copy of it archived somewhere and can't get it to work.
That, and I want to be able to harass the alpha testers and make them send
me feedback.
Q: When will it be done?
A: As soon as a few alpha testers decide that it is worthy of public
consumption. The source will be released with the binary ASAP. At a
minimum, I'll make it available on my site and the Allaire Tag Gallery (or
DevEx or whatever they are calling it now). (Probably a few of the other
galleries, as well.)
Q: Will [I] sell [your] email address to evil people?
A: You're kidding, right? Now way, no how.
Q: Will this be part of a commercial product?
A: See the answer to the previous question. Nope. The PCRE has been
written under the GPL. Therefore, this code is under the GPL. It is
completely free.
Q: Will [you] have to sign an NDA or something stupid like that to be a
tester?
A: Nope. Nothing of the sort.
Think of it like this: I'm the lonely coder geek and you're the cute one at
the end of the bar. By simply coming over to me and showing an interest
you'll have access to everything. All you have to do is say Hello and the
drinks are on me.
Getting out of fantasyland, I just want to know who you are so that I can
say really mean things about you if I get emails a year from now from
someone who can't figure out how to make the alpha work.
END TRANS
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