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98 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
98 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
regex-syntax
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============
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This crate provides a robust regular expression parser.
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[](https://github.com/rust-lang/regex/actions)
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[](https://crates.io/crates/regex-syntax)
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[](https://github.com/rust-lang/regex)
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### Documentation
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https://docs.rs/regex-syntax
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### Overview
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There are two primary types exported by this crate: `Ast` and `Hir`. The former
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is a faithful abstract syntax of a regular expression, and can convert regular
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expressions back to their concrete syntax while mostly preserving its original
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form. The latter type is a high level intermediate representation of a regular
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expression that is amenable to analysis and compilation into byte codes or
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automata. An `Hir` achieves this by drastically simplifying the syntactic
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structure of the regular expression. While an `Hir` can be converted back to
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its equivalent concrete syntax, the result is unlikely to resemble the original
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concrete syntax that produced the `Hir`.
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### Example
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This example shows how to parse a pattern string into its HIR:
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```rust
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use regex_syntax::{hir::Hir, parse};
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let hir = parse("a|b").unwrap();
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assert_eq!(hir, Hir::alternation(vec![
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Hir::literal("a".as_bytes()),
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Hir::literal("b".as_bytes()),
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]));
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```
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### Safety
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This crate has no `unsafe` code and sets `forbid(unsafe_code)`. While it's
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possible this crate could use `unsafe` code in the future, the standard
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for doing so is extremely high. In general, most code in this crate is not
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performance critical, since it tends to be dwarfed by the time it takes to
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compile a regular expression into an automaton. Therefore, there is little need
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for extreme optimization, and therefore, use of `unsafe`.
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The standard for using `unsafe` in this crate is extremely high because this
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crate is intended to be reasonably safe to use with user supplied regular
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expressions. Therefore, while there may be bugs in the regex parser itself,
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they should _never_ result in memory unsafety unless there is either a bug
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in the compiler or the standard library. (Since `regex-syntax` has zero
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dependencies.)
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### Crate features
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By default, this crate bundles a fairly large amount of Unicode data tables
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(a source size of ~750KB). Because of their large size, one can disable some
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or all of these data tables. If a regular expression attempts to use Unicode
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data that is not available, then an error will occur when translating the `Ast`
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to the `Hir`.
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The full set of features one can disable are
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[in the "Crate features" section of the documentation](https://docs.rs/regex-syntax/*/#crate-features).
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### Testing
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Simply running `cargo test` will give you very good coverage. However, because
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of the large number of features exposed by this crate, a `test` script is
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included in this directory which will test several feature combinations. This
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is the same script that is run in CI.
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### Motivation
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The primary purpose of this crate is to provide the parser used by `regex`.
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Specifically, this crate is treated as an implementation detail of the `regex`,
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and is primarily developed for the needs of `regex`.
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Since this crate is an implementation detail of `regex`, it may experience
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breaking change releases at a different cadence from `regex`. This is only
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possible because this crate is _not_ a public dependency of `regex`.
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Another consequence of this de-coupling is that there is no direct way to
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compile a `regex::Regex` from a `regex_syntax::hir::Hir`. Instead, one must
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first convert the `Hir` to a string (via its `std::fmt::Display`) and then
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compile that via `Regex::new`. While this does repeat some work, compilation
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typically takes much longer than parsing.
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Stated differently, the coupling between `regex` and `regex-syntax` exists only
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at the level of the concrete syntax.
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