Re: sorting an array of regexes

On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 01:52:39PM +0100, Wouter van Vliet wrote: : Eugene Lee suggested: : > On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 01:15:32PM +0100, Adam i Agnieszka : > Gasiorowski FNORD wrote: : > : : > : There is an array of regexes, for example : > : : > : $array = array('moon', '[wh]ood', '[^as]eed' ... : > : (about 300 entries). : > : : > : I want to sort it comparing to the : > : character lenght of a regex. For example : > : [wh]ood is 4 characters, moon is 4 characters. : > : There are only letters of the alphabet and : > : letter ranges present in those regexes. I : > : want the "longest" ones first. : > : : > : How would you write the sorting function? : > : > This might be the most functionally correct, although it's definitely : > not the fastest route. : > : > function re_len($pat) : > { : > return strlen(preg_replace('/\[[^]]+]/', '_', $pat)); : : I think you meant: : : /\[[^\]]+]/ : : as regex ;) Not sure, but I think one more block-bracked needed to be : escaped ;) Nope. My pattern is legitimate. Within a range, if the first character is a closing-square-bracket ']', it is treated as the literal character and not as the end of range. If the range starts with a negation '^', then the same rule applies to the second character. This is also a sad indication that I really know my regular expressions, or I need a vacation. :-)