Rematch

Mikmatch is an extension of OCaml's pattern matching that integrates regular expressions and makes it easy to get them right.

The Rematch project as currently envisioned will be in a Camlp4-free reimplementation of the most useful features of Mikmatch.

Goals

• Faster build times: Camlp4 preprocessing typically doubles build times of OCaml projects, which is not acceptable.

• Not depending on Camlp4 or Camlp5: they are complicated pieces of software but lack strong and unified developer support.

• Replacing Mikmatch at a reasonable cost: that means keeping only the most commonly used features.

Design ideas

• Fast, standalone program that converts source code to OCaml code. Generated code shall be reviewable by humans.

• Embedding within OCaml programs will be possible with cppo and the #ext ... #endext directives.

• Keeping the same syntax for regexps.

• Support for only PCRE, dropping support for Str.

• Support only string matching, no more matching of other concrete types containing strings. For example, writing match l with RE "Hello" :: _ -> ... for testing the first element of a list of strings will no longer be possible.

• Unfortunately no more toplevel support. Not sure what to do in order to facilitate testing.

Example:

(* Some OCaml code *)

#ext rematch

(* Some Rematch code *)

(* "let rex" is the syntax for introducing a regexp definition.
   It is "RE" in Mikmatch and just "let" in Ocamllex.
   It plays better with automatic OCaml indentation than "RE". *)
let rex date =
  (digit{4} as year : int)
  "-" (digit{2} as month : int)
  "-" (digit{2} as day : int)

(* Function definition.
   The "[/" and "/]" around the regexp are not necessary for now,
   but would be necessary if in the future we can match using
   normal OCaml patterns as supported by Mikmatch.
   The vertical bars are also not needed but make automatic
   indentation easier. (What about arrows?)
   The curly braces around the right-hand OCaml expression make
   it possible to not implement and maintain a strict OCaml parser.
*)
let f x = function
    [/ "[" date "]" blank* (_* as msg) eos /]  { (year, month, day, msg) }
  | [/ "" /]  { x }

(* Alternative syntax (more readable, not extensible with OCaml patterns) *)

let f x = function
    "[" date "]" blank* (_* as msg) eos -> { (year, month, day, msg) }
  | "" -> { x }

(* end of alternative syntax *)


(* Same as: let g = function ... *)
let g s =
  match s with
    ...
#endext

(* Simple match expression *)
let h x =
  ...
  #ext rematch
    match s with
       ...
  #endext