regexplain

WORK IN PROGRESS!!

regexplain is going to be an RStudio addin that helps you interactively build up your regex. Inspired by RegExr and stringr::str_view.

Done (ish)

You can use view_regex() for a stringr::str_view() replacement that includes groups.

text <- c("breakfast=eggs;lunch=pizza",
          "breakfast=bacon;lunch=spaghetti", 
          "no food here")
pattern <- "((\\w+)=)(\\w+).+(ch=s?p)"

view_regex(text, pattern)

Example view_regex(text, pattern).

t_nested <- "anestedgroupwithingroupexample"
r_nested <- "(a(nested)(group(within(group))(example)))"
view_regex(t_nested, r_nested)

Example of nested groups

Planned (ish)

1. An Rstudio addin gadget that allows you to interactively enter the regex and see the results. Like the above example, where the regex field is a text input.

2. Import data from your environment, like a character vector, file, or data.frame column when opening the gadget.

3. Help tab in the gadget, pulling from ?regex but with some navigation.

4. Tab to interactively explore output of varying regex-applying functions. In other words, see what stringr::str_locate_all or stringr::str_match_all or grep or grepl return when applying the regex to your text.