Question

I need to extract the same type of information (e.g. First name, Last Name, Telephone, …), from numerous different text sources, each with a different format & different order of the variables of interest.

I want a function that does the extraction based on a regular expression and returns the result as descriptive variables. In other words, instead of returning each match result as submatch[0], submatch[1], submatch[2], ..., have it do either of the following:

1. return std::map so that the submatches can be accessed via:

   submatch["first_name"], submatch["last_name"], submatch["telephone"]

2. return a variables with the submatches so that the submatches can be accessed via:

   submatch_first_name, submatch_last_name, submatch_telephone

I can write a wrapper class around boost::regex to do the first one, but I was hoping there would be a built-in or a more elegant way to do this in C++/Boost/STL/C.

Answer 1

Can you use “named capture groups”? It seems like returning a map is exactly what you want.

For example, in RE2

Check wikipedia see if your favorite regex library supports named captures.