Ire

Irregular Regular Expressions

A sort of scripting language thingy based around regular expressions

Installation

npm install -g ire

Usage

You can run a script from a file with:

ire myscript.ire

Or you can pass a script in with the -e option:

ire -e '//Hello, world\n/p'

If you add the -p flag, ire will print the data line at the end of the script. This is useful when using ire in pipe such as:

cat /proc/cpuinfo | ire -p -e '/\s*:\s*/ = /'

Syntax

Ire programs are made up of blocks of statements.

Statements can be indented after another statement to show dependency or grouping. If you prefer, you can group statements by using { and }.

While inside a group using { and }, you cannot use indentation to show grouping but you can use semicolons to separate statements as well as newlines.

A statement can be either:

• A reference marker
• An import statement
• A command

Reference markers

>myref
    # some code to run
    # if myref is later imported

Or

>mref { #some code to run ; # if myref is later imported }

To give a name to a block of code, use a reference marker. The code under the marker will not be executed immediately, but can be called by an include statement

Import statements

<myref>

Import statements simply execute a block that has been marked with the reference marker of the same name.

Commands

A command can be in one of three formats:

• SEPARATOR regexp
• SEPARATOR regexp SEPARATOR flags
• SEPARATOR regexp SEPARATOR replacement SEPARATOR flags

SEPARATOR can be any charater except < or > (to avoid confusion with refs and imports)

regexp is a regular expression to match against the current data. If it matches, any indented block following this command will be executed.

replacement is a string to replace the matched portion of the data with. Use $1, $2, etc. to refer back to capture groups in regexp.

flags is a string of letters each of which modifies the behaviour of either the regexp or replacement or performs an action.

List of currently supported flags

• g - global

  • apply the replacement as many times as the regexp can be made to match

• p - print

  • print the result to standard output

• w - whole

  • actions perform on the entire data string, not just the part that matched

• b - bound

  • treat regexp as if it started with ^.* and ended with .*$ (i.e. match the whole of the data) - implies w

• t - temporary

  • only apply the replacement for this block

• n - numeric

  • treat replacement as a numeric expression and evaluate it

• i - insensitive

  • apply the regexp case-insensitively

• r - read

  • read a line from standard input and make it available in the replacement string as $-

• o - opposite

  • count as a match only if regexp does not match the data string
  • (Note: if used with a replacement, the whole data string will be replaced. $0 will refer to the original value)

Not yet implemented/tested flags

• e - exit

  • exit block

• l - loop

  • repeat block

• m - multi-line

  • treat new-line characters as white-space

Examples

There's no better way to understand something that by looking at a few examples. Here goes...

Hello, world

Everyone's favourite program

# Print out "Hello, world"
//Hello, world/p

Programs start off with an empty data string. The simple program above works by matching nothing (this will match against any string) and replacing it will "Hello, world" and then printing the result.

If you were to include this as part of a larger program, you would want:

# Print out "Hello, world"
//Hello, world/tp

The t means that the change is not permanent and only applies for this line.

Note that the comment line (# print out "Hello, world") is actually also a command. It uses # as it's separator and then looks for something that matches Print out "Hello, world". Even if the data string did happen to match, it doesn't perform any action on it so it effectively gets ignored.