Re: How to grok a complicated regex?

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>]

On 2015-03-13, at 22:35, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> so I have this monstrosity [note: I know, there are much worse ones,
> too!]:
>
> "\\`\\(?:\\\\[([]\\|\\$+\\)?\\(.*?\\)\\(?:\\\\[])]\\|\\$+\\)?\\'"
>
> (it's in the org-latex--script-size function in ox-latex.el, if you're
> curious).
>
> I'm not asking “what does this match” – I can read it myself.  But it
> comes with a considerable effort.  Are you aware of any tools that might
> help to understand such regexen?

BTW, it turned out to be fairly simple after all, but I could see this
only after passing it through (insert ...) in a temporary buffer, so
that all the double backslashes stopped looking like a drunkard's
nightmare.  So even such a rudimentary "tool" (basically, temp buffer
and `insert') did help a lot.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University