Is there a way to indicate that two or more regex phrases can occur in any order? For instance, XML attributes can be written in any order. Say that I have the following XML:
<a href='home.php' class='link' title='Home'>Home</a> <a href='home.php' title='Home' class='link'>Home</a> How would I write a match that checks the class and title and works for both cases? I’m mainly looking for the syntax that allows me to check in any order, not just matching the class and title as I can do that. Is there any way besides just including both combinations and connecting them with a ‘|’?
Edit: My preference would be to do it in a single regex as I’m building it programatically and also unit testing it.
No, I believe the best way to do it with a single RE is exactly as you describe. Unfortunately, it’ll get very messy when your XML can have 5 different attributes, giving you a large number of different REs to check.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be doing this with an RE at all since they’re not meant to be programming languages. What’s wrong with the old fashioned approach of using an XML processing library?
If you’re required to use an RE, this answer probably won’t help much, but I believe in using the right tools for the job.