Question

I’m trying to find a way to use [a regular expression] as a [variable name] or [a function name]. Do any programming or scripting languages offer this feature?

Example of the feature I want (using Java-like pseudocode):

int <<(my|a|an)(number|Integer)>> = 10;
//this variable has a regular expression as a name

function <<((print|write)(Stuff|Things|Words))>>(int myInt){
//this function has a regular expression as a name
     System.out.println(myInt);
}

printStuff(myInt); //should have the same effect as the next line
writeWords(anInteger); //should have the same effect as the previous line

Answer 1

In Perl you could do such things for functions using AUTOLOAD.

Example:

my @refun = (
        [qr/(print|write)(Stuff|Things|Words)/ => sub { print "printStuff(@_)\n"; }],
        [qr/fo+(?:ba+r)?/ => sub { print "foobar(@_)\n"; }],
        );

our $AUTOLOAD;
sub AUTOLOAD{
        for(@refun){
                my ($re, $sub) = @$_;
                goto &$sub if $AUTOLOAD =~ /$re/;
        }

        my ($package, $filename, $line) = caller;
        die "Undefined subroutine &$AUTOLOAD called at $filename line $line.\n";
}


printStuff(10);
writeWords(10);
foo();
fooooooooooooooobar(1,2,3);

Output:

printStuff(10)
printStuff(10)
foobar()
foobar(1 2 3)

Not sure about variables, but it’s probably possible as well.