re-int-ineq

Regular Expression Integer Inequalities

This module provides a single function, re_int_ineq, which generates regular expressions that match integers that fulfill a specified inequality (greater than, less than, and so on). By default, only non-negative integers are matched (minus signs are ignored), and optionally all integers can be matched, including negative. Integers with leading zeros are never matched.

Note: Normally, this is not a task for regular expressions, instead it is often preferable to use regular expressions or other methods to extract the numbers from a string and then use normal numeric comparison operators. However, there are cases where this module can be useful, for example when embedding these regular expressions as part of a larger expression or grammar, or when dealing with an API that only accepts regular expressions.

The generated regular expressions are valid in Perl, Python, and JavaScript ES2018 or later, and likely in other languages that support lookaround assertions with the same syntax.

See Also

Perl version: https://metacpan.org/pod/Regexp::IntInequality

Python port: https://pypi.org/project/re-int-ineq/ (includes a command-line interface)

Author, Copyright and License

Copyright (c) 2024 Hauke Daempfling ([e-mail]).

This file is part of the "Regular Expression Integer Inequalities" library.

This library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/

Functions

re_int_ineq

▸ re_int_ineq(op, n, allint?, anchor?): string

Generates a regex that matches integers according to its parameters.

Note the regular expressions will grow significantly the more digits are in the integer. I suggest not to generate regular expressions from unbounded user input.

Parameters

Name	Type	Default value	Description
op	string	undefined	The operator the regex should implement, one of ">", ">=", "<", "<=", "!=", or "==" (the latter is provided simply for completeness, despite the name of this module).
n	number	undefined	The integer against which the regex should compare. May only be negative when allint is true.
allint	boolean	false	If false (the default), the generated regex will only cover positive integers and zero, and n may not be negative. Note that in this case, any minus signs before integers are not included in the regex. This means that when using the regex, for example, to extract integers greater than 10 from the string "3 5 15 -7 -12", it will match "15" and "12"! —•— If True, the generated regex will cover all integers, including negative, and integer may also be any integer. Note that all generated regexes that match zero will also match "-0" and vice versa.
anchor	boolean	true	This is true by default, meaning the regex will have zero-width assertions (a.k.a. anchors) surrounding the expression in order to prevent matches inside of integers. For example, when extracting integers less than 20 from the string "1199 32 5", the generated regex will by default not extract the "11" or "19" from "1199", and will only match "5". On the other hand, any non-digit characters (including minus signs) are considered delimiters: extracting all integers less than 5 from the string "2x3-3-24y25" with allint turned on will result in "2", "3", "-3", and "-24". —•— This behavior is useful if you are extracting numbers from a longer string. If you want to validate that a string contains only an integer, then you will need to add additional anchors. For example, you might add ^ before the generated regex and $ after, keeping in mind not to turn on the multiline (m) flag, as that changes the meaning of these anchors. However, this task is more commonly done by first checking that the string is a valid integer in general, and then using normal numeric comparisons to check that it is in the range you expect. —•— If on the other hand you want to turn off the default anchors described above, perhaps because you want to implement your own, then you can set this option to false. Repeating the above example, extracting integers less than 20 from the string "1199 32 5" with this option off and no additional anchors results in "11", "9", "9", "3", "2", and "5" - so use this feature with caution and testing!

Returns

string

The regular expression. It is returned as a string rather than a precompiled regex so it can more easily be embedded in larger expressions.