Simplex Parser

If you are using match(), snag(), or lex(),the Simplex class takes care of everything on this page for you. However, if you want to call Simplex Parser directly for a SimplexResult object without lexing, you will first need to use parse_model to generate the model array.

Parse Model

The Unit::parse_model function is a helper function in the Unit class. It generates the Unit models from an input string, and is used for this purpose in the Simplex constructor. It takes a onestring containing the entered model as a parameter, and returns a FlexArray<Unit> object containing the parsed Unit objects.

Example:

// Create the model and model array objects, then parse
onestring model = "~d+/^l/";
FlexArray<Unit> model_array = Unit::parse_model(model);

In this example, the array contains two Units, the first of which will snag one or more digit characters, the second of which will match exactly one latin character.

Simplex Parser Function

The simplex_parser() function is internally used by the match(), snag(), and lex() functions to produce their results, but can be accessed directly if needed. This is where Simplex parses the input to determine whether the results match, and snags any matching snag units to return to their respective functions.

This function is not optimized or designed to be used externally, so there are no helpful overloads currently implemented. If you need to use it, though, it takes three parameters: an input string as a onestring to check, a FlexArray<Unit> containing the parsed model of units, and an optional bool if you want to lex rather than match the model exclusively, which defaults to false if not provided. (If you need to generate the FlexArray separately, see Parse Model.) It returns a SimplexResult object that consists of a boolean match (used by match), a FlexArray of onestrings snag_array (used by snag), which will be empty if the match fails, and a unsigned integer match_length primarily for use cases of lex().

Example:

// After using the model generation in the above example...
onestring input = "123a";
SimplexResult result = simplex_parser(input, model_array);
onestring input2 = "1234";
SimplexResult result2 = simplex_parser(input, model_array);

The result object now contains the boolean match, which is true, the FlexArray snag_array, which contains one onestring 123, and the uint_fast16_t match_length which is 4. However, in result2, match is false, the snag_array is empty, and the match_length is 0, because the input did not contain a match for the ^l/ Unit.

Note

Because of the way the logic works, match_length may be unreliable if you are //not// lexing and have not flagged lexing as true.