Translation of a dynamic regex in awk

Faki · 03-07-2023, 09:46 AM

I am writing a number of dynamic regular expressions. These can get quite complicated.

Is it possible to write an awk function that takes a dynamic regex and prints only what
awk would actually see when interpreting the dynamic regex ?

pan64 · 03-07-2023, 10:02 AM

regexp itself is just a string. You can print it as any other string (if it is stored in a variable). But you cannot print a regex like this:

Code:

gsub(/regex/, "")

because it is not stored anywhere.

Faki · 03-07-2023, 11:37 AM

You are correct, I can print the string. But the string could contain any sort of escape sequences and so on.

What I am looking to do is exclude the complications to have a better and clear idea of what it would match.

pan64 · 03-08-2023, 12:19 AM

www.regex101.com