regexp search on infinite string?

[Paddy]

On Sep 14, 9:49 pm, Paddy <paddy3... at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Lets say i have a generator running that generates successive
> characters of a 'string'>From what I know, if I want to do a regexp search for a pattern of
>
> characters then I would have to 'freeze' the generator  and pass the
> characters so far to re.search.
> It is expensive to create successive characters, but caching could be
> used for past characters. is it possible to wrap the generator in a
> class, possibly inheriting from string, that would allow the regexp
> searching of the string but without terminating the generator? In
> other words duck typing for the usual string object needed by
> re.search?
>
> - Paddy.

There seems to be no way of breaking into the re library accessing
characters from the string:

>>> class S(str):
... 	def __getitem__(self, *a):
... 		print "getitem:",a
... 		return str.__getitem__(self, *a)
... 	def __get__(self, *a):
... 		print "get:",a
... 		return str.__get__(self, *a)
...
>>> s = S('sdasd')
>>> m = re.search('as', s); m.span()
(2, 4)
>>> m = sre.search('as', s); m.span()
(2, 4)
>>> class A(array.array):
... 	def __getitem__(self, *a):
... 		print "getitem:",a
... 		return str.__getitem__(self, *a)
... 	def __get__(self, *a):
... 		print "get:",a
... 		return str.__get__(self, *a)
...
>>> s = A('c','sdasd')
>>> m = re.search('as', s); m.span()
(2, 4)
>>> m = sre.search('as', s); m.span()
(2, 4)
>>>

- Paddy.