On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Robert Feldt wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Ben Tilly wrote:
> 
> > >A q for you recursively minded folks out there:
> > >Anyone got a Ruby regexp matching valid Ruby regexps?
> > >
> > Unless Ruby's Regexp engine has some extensions I have
> > not heard about, this is impossible.
> > 
> I had some doubts in the back of my mind but ruby-talk
> folks generally seems to find ways to accomplish even the impossible. :-)
> 
> Thanks for making this clear. I'll workaround the situation giving rise to
> the q. Its not a big deal...

Well... let's not give up yet :-)

It depends exactly what you want to do.  If you want to test for
regexp validity, you could do something like:

   goodr = "^[abcde]$"
   badr = ".)"

   begin
     /#{goodr}/.is_a? Regexp
     /#{badr}/.is_a? Regexp
   rescue RegexpError => msg
     puts "test failed: #{msg}"
   end


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack / candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav / shu.edu
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