Irregular methods for regular expressions.

Exrex is a command line tool and python module that generates all - or random - matching strings to a given regular expression and more. It's pure python, without external dependencies.

There are regular expressions with infinite matching strings (eg.: [a-z]+), in these cases exrex limits the maximum length of the infinite parts.

Exrex uses generators, so the memory usage does not depend on the number of matching strings.

Features

• Generating all matching strings
• Generating a random matching string
• Counting the number of matching strings
• Simplification of regular expressions

To install exrex, simply:

$ pip install exrex

or

$ easy_install exrex

>>> import exrex >>> exrex.getone('(ex)r\\1') 'exrex' >>> list(exrex.generate('((hai){2}|world!)')) ['haihai', 'world!'] >>> exrex.getone('\d{4}-\d{4}-\d{4}-[0-9]{4}') '3096-7886-2834-5671' >>> exrex.getone('(1[0-2]|0[1-9])(:[0-5]\d){2} (A|P)M') '09:31:40 AM' >>> exrex.count('[01]{0,9}') 1023 >>> print '\n'.join(exrex.generate('This is (a (code|cake|test)|an (apple|elf|output))\.')) This is a code. This is a cake. This is a test. This is an apple. This is an elf. This is an output. >>> print exrex.simplify('(ab|ac|ad)') (a[bcd])

> exrex --help usage: exrex.py [-h] [-o FILE] [-l] [-d DELIMITER] [-v] REGEX exrex - regular expression string generator positional arguments: REGEX REGEX string optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -o FILE, --output FILE Output file - default is STDOUT -l N, --limit N Max limit for range size - default is 20 -c, --count Count matching strings -m N, --max-number N Max number of strings - default is -1 -r, --random Returns a random string that matches to the regex -s, --simplify Simplifies a regular expression -d DELIMITER, --delimiter DELIMITER Delimiter - default is \n -v, --verbose Verbose mode 

Examples:

$ exrex '[asdfg]' a s d f g $ exrex -r '(0[1-9]|1[012])-\d{2}' 09-85 $ exrex '[01]{10}' -c 1024 

Bugs or suggestions? Visit the issue tracker.

http://exrex.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

• Command line switches to change default character sets/ranges/range limits (eg. for '.','\s'..) (40%)
• Extend categories (re.sre_parse.CATEGORIES) (30%)
• Improve setup.py
• More verbose code
• Documentation
• Optimizations
• Generation of n different random matching string
• Memory usage reduction (100%?) - generators
• Count the number of matching strings - (100%?)
• Unicode support (100%)
• Handle grouprefs (100%)
• Python3 compatibility (100%) ( >= python3.3)

exrex is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. exrex is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with exrex. If not, see < http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ >. (C) 2012- by Adam Tauber, <asciimoo@gmail.com> 

• Boat: exrex '( {20}(\| *\\|-{22}|\|)|\.={50}| ( ){0,5}\\\.| {12}~{39})'
• Eyes: exrex '(o|O|0)(_)(o|O|0)'

Tools that generate a list of all possible strings that match a given pattern:

• regldg (features a live demo on the website)
• regex-genex (supports using multiple regex patterns simultaneously)

Tools that generate random strings, one by one, that match a given pattern:

• randexp.js (features several live demos on the website)
• rstr.xeger (a method of the rstr Python module)

• python -m cProfile exrex.py '[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]' -o /dev/null
• python -m cProfile exrex.py '[0-9]{6}' -o /dev/null