Converting a regular expression to a string in Ruby

Question

Is there a way of generating a string that would match a regular expression in Ruby

e.g.

regex           output
^\d{6}$         875914
^\d{3}-\w{2}    584-AS

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

2

From a response on a related SO question - Matt Aimonetti's randexp might be of some use. Not generalised to all regexp though...

EDIT: This version looks more up-to-date.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:27

Community

answered Dec 31 '09 at 10:53

martin clayton

Yes, that looks more promising than what I posted. – Bart Kiers Dec 31 '09 at 11:12
This gem looks sweet, going to look further into this. – Dec 31 '09 at 15:30

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 31 '09 at 10:42

1

I haven't tested it, but this looks like something you're looking for: http://code.google.com/p/xeger/

Note that I cannot believe it will handle more complex regex-es (using look-arounds, back-references, etc.). But again, I haven't tested it.

EDIT: sorry, I now just saw you're looking for a Ruby implementation...

answered Dec 31 '09 at 10:42

Bart Kiers

1

That is... interesting. Poorly documented though, and the 2 tests they have there don't reveal much... – Kobi Dec 31 '09 at 10:48

2 Answers2