Question

I’m trying to create a regexp that can match this:

argument ::= define_scope [';' define_scope]*
define_scope ::= (['local'] | 'global') define_var
define_var ::= variable_name expression
variable_name ::= Name

So, something like local varName something;;world foo bar;;local foobar bar.
I’ve tried with:

((^|;;)?(local|world) (.+?) (.+?))+

but if I use this on the previous example I obtain these matches:

local varName s
;;world foo b
;;local foobar b

so it take only the first letter of the last word of each match.
If I remove the lazy matching from the last group, it match only:

local varName something;;world foo bar;;local foobar bar

so the last group is something;;world foo bar;;local foobar bar.

Some ideas to fix this?

Answer 1

That is the regexp that I needed:

((?:(local|world) )?(.*?)(?: (.+?))(?:(?<!;);(?!;)|$))+?

This one can parse without problem anything that have ;; without matching it

Thanks anyways to all.