Flags

Flags in Edify are same as the flags in re module. Edify supports the following flags:

  • A: ASCII (standard ASCII) character

  • D: DEBUG, returns re.DEBUG

  • I: Ignore Case

  • M: Multi Line

  • S: Dot All

  • X: Verbose

To learn more about the flags, please refer to the re module documentation. If you wish to use the /g or any other unsupported flag, you can use the re.search or re.match methods, according to your needs. If you need to support extra flags, you can try looking at the regex package. To get started, import the RegexBuilder class:

from edify import RegexBuilder

ASCII Only Matching

Make \w, \W, \b, \B, \d, \D, \s, and \S perform ASCII-only matching instead of full Unicode matching. This is only meaningful for Unicode patterns, and is ignored for byte patterns. Corresponds to the inline flag (?a).

Example

# returns re.compile('hello', re.ASCII)
expr = RegexBuilder().ascii_only().string('hello').to_regex()

Display Debug Information

Display debug information about compiled expression. No corresponding inline flag.

Example

# returns re.compile('hello', re.DEBUG)
expr = RegexBuilder().debug().string('hello').to_regex()

Ignore Case

Perform case-insensitive matching; expressions like [A-Z] will also match lowercase letters. Full Unicode matching (such as Ü matching ü) also works unless the re.ASCII flag is used to disable non-ASCII matches. Corresponds to the inline flag (?i).

Example

# returns re.compile('hello', re.IGNORECASE)
expr = RegexBuilder().ignore_case().string('hello').to_regex()

Multi Line

When specified, the pattern character '^' matches at the beginning of the string and at the beginning of each line (immediately following each newline); and the pattern character '$' matches at the end of the string and at the end of each line (immediately preceding each newline). By default, '^' matches only at the beginning of the string, and '$' only at the end of the string and immediately before the newline (if any) at the end of the string. Corresponds to the inline flag (?m).

Example

# returns re.compile('hello', re.MULTILINE)
expr = RegexBuilder().multi_line().string('hello').to_regex()

Dot All

Make the '.' special character match any character at all, including a newline; without this flag, '.' will match anything except a newline. Corresponds to the inline flag (?s).

Example

# returns re.compile('hello', re.DOTALL)
expr = RegexBuilder().dot_all().string('hello').to_regex()

Verbose

This workd same as the re.VERBOSE flag, which allows you to write regular expressions that look nicer and are more readable by allowing you to visually separate logical sections of the pattern and add comments. However, this flag is basically rendered useless with Edify, but it is still available for use to keep the API consistent with the re module. Corresponds to the inline flag (?x).

Example

# returns re.compile('hello', re.VERBOSE)
expr = RegexBuilder().verbose().string('hello').to_regex()