Question

I’m familiar with Regex itself, but whenever I try to find any examples or documentation to use regex with Unix computers, I just get tutorials on how to write regex or how to use the .NET specific libraries available for Windows. I’ve been searching for a while and I can’t find any good tutorials on C++ regex on Unix machines.

What I’m trying to do:

Parse a string using regex by breaking it up and then reading the different subgroups. To make a PHP analogy, something like preg_match that returns all $matches.

Answer 1

Consider using Boost.Regex.

An example (from the website):

bool validate_card_format(const std::string& s)
{
   static const boost::regex e("(\\d{4}[- ]){3}\\d{4}");
   return regex_match(s, e);
}

Another example:

// match any format with the regular expression:
const boost::regex e("\\A(\\d{3,4})[- ]?(\\d{4})[- ]?(\\d{4})[- ]?(\\d{4})\\z");
const std::string machine_format("\\1\\2\\3\\4");
const std::string human_format("\\1-\\2-\\3-\\4");

std::string machine_readable_card_number(const std::string s)
{
   return regex_replace(s, e, machine_format, boost::match_default | boost::format_sed);
}

std::string human_readable_card_number(const std::string s)
{
   return regex_replace(s, e, human_format, boost::match_default | boost::format_sed);
}