Error checking using regex ?

[Heiko Wundram]

Am Dienstag, 8. Juni 2004 13:26 schrieb Guy Robinson:
> I have the code below which parses an expression string and creates tokens.

You cannot parse expressions using regular expressions, and neither check them 
for error, as the language specified by regular expressions is not 
"intelligent" enough to match braces (read any book on complexity theory 
primers, you need a machine with state, such as a deterministic stack 
machine, to check for matching braces).

Your best bet to be able to check an expression, and also to be able to parse 
it, is to write a context free grammar for your syntax, try to parse the 
string you're evaluating, and in case parsing fails, to complain that the 
expression is invalid. If you're parsing Python expressions, your best bet is 
to call functions from the compile module (which create a code object from a 
Python expression which is callable using exec).

HTH!

Heiko.