PHP: Patrones recursivos

Patrones recursivos

Considere el problema de hacer coincidir una cadena entre paréntesis, permitiendo paréntesis anidados ilimitados. Sin el uso de recursión, lo mejor que se puede hacer es usar un patrón que coincide hasta una profundidad fija de anidamiento. No es posible manejar una profundidad de anidamiento arbitraria. Perl 5.6 ha proporcionado una instalación experimental que permite que las expresiones regulares sean recursivas (entre otras cosas). Se proporciona el elemento especial (?R) para el caso específico de recursión. Este patrón PCRE resuelve el problema de los paréntesis (asumiendo que la opción PCRE_EXTENDED está establecida para que el espacio en blanco se ignore): \( ( (?>[^()]+) | (?R) )* \)

Primero coincide con un paréntesis de apertura. Luego coincide con cualquier número de subcadenas que pueden ser una secuencia de caracteres no paréntesis, o una coincidencia recursiva del patrón mismo (es decir, una subcadena correctamente entre paréntesis). Finalmente hay un paréntesis de cierre.

Este ejemplo de patrón en particular contiene repeticiones ilimitadas anidadas, y por lo tanto el uso de un subpatrón de una sola vez para coincidir con cadenas de caracteres no paréntesis es importante al aplicar el patrón a cadenas que no coinciden. Por ejemplo, cuando se aplica a (aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa() produce "no coincide" rápidamente. Sin embargo, si no se usa un subpatrón de una sola vez, la coincidencia tarda un tiempo muy largo porque hay tantas formas diferentes en que las repeticiones + y * pueden dividir el sujeto, y todas tienen que ser probadas antes de que se pueda informar el fallo.

Los valores establecidos para cualquier subpatrón de captura son aquellos del nivel más externo de la recursión en el que se establece el valor del subpatrón. Si el patrón anterior coincide con (ab(cd)ef) el valor para los paréntesis de captura es "ef", que es el último valor tomado en el nivel superior. Si se añaden más paréntesis, dando \( ( ( (?>[^()]+) | (?R) )* ) \) entonces la cadena que capturan es "ab(cd)ef", el contenido de los paréntesis de nivel superior. Si hay más de 15 paréntesis de captura en un patrón, PCRE tiene que obtener memoria adicional para almacenar datos durante una recursión, lo cual hace mediante el uso de pcre_malloc, liberándola posteriormente mediante pcre_free. Si no se puede obtener memoria, solo guarda datos para los primeros 15 subpatrones de captura, ya que no hay forma de dar un error de memoria insuficiente desde dentro de una recursión.

(?1), (?2) y así sucesivamente pueden usarse para subpatrones recursivos también. También es posible usar subpatrones con nombre: (?P>name) o (?&name).

Si la sintaxis para una referencia de subpatrón recursivo (ya sea por número o por nombre) se usa fuera de los paréntesis a los que se refiere, opera como una subrutina en un lenguaje de programación. Un ejemplo anterior señaló que el patrón (sens|respons)e and \1ibility coincide con "sense and sensibility" y "response and responsibility", pero no con "sense and responsibility". Si en su lugar se usa el patrón (sens|respons)e and (?1)ibility sí coincide con "sense and responsibility" además de las otras dos cadenas. Tales referencias deben, sin embargo, seguir al subpatrón al que se refieren.

La longitud máxima de una cadena de sujeto es el número positivo más grande que puede contener una variable entera. Sin embargo, PCRE usa recursión para manejar subpatrones y repetición indefinida. Esto significa que el espacio de pila disponible puede limitar el tamaño de una cadena de sujeto que puede ser procesada por ciertos patrones.

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User Contributed Notes 8 notes

down

horvath at webarticum dot hu ¶

12 years ago

With the (?R) item you can link only to the full pattern, because it quasi equals to (?0). You can not use anchors, asserts etc., and you can only check that string CONTAINS a valid hierarchy or not.

This is wrong: ^\(((?>[^()]+)|(?R))*\)$

However, you can bracketing the full expression, and replace (?R) to the relative link (?-2). This make it reusable. So you can check complex expressions, for example:
<?php

$bracket_system = "(\\(((?>[^()]+)|(?-2))*\\))"; // (reuseable)
$bracket_systems = "((?>[^()]+)?$bracket_system)*(?>[^()]+)?"; // (reuseable)
$equation = "$bracket_systems=$bracket_systems"; // Both side of the equation must be contain valid bracket systems
var_dump(preg_match("/^$equation\$/","a*(a-(2a+2))=4(a+3)-2(a-(a-2))")); // Outputs 'int(1)'
var_dump(preg_match("/^$equation\$/","a*(a-(2a+2)=4(a+3)-2(a-(a-2)))")); // Outputs 'int(0)'

?>

You can also catch multibyte quotes with the 'u' modifier (if you use UTF-8), eg:
<?php

$quoted = "(»((?>[^»«]+)|(?-2))*«)"; // (reuseable)
$prompt = "[\\w ]+: $quoted";
var_dump(preg_match("/^$prompt\$/u","Your name: »write here«")); // Outputs 'int(1)'

?>

down

emanueledelgrande at email dot it ¶

15 years ago

The recursion in regular expressions is the only way to allow the parsing of HTML code with nested tags of indefinite depth.
It seems it's not yet a spreaded practice; not so much contents are available on the web regarding regexp recursion, and until now no user contribute notes have been published on this manual page.
I made several tests with complex patterns to get tags with specific attributes or namespaces, studying the recursion of a subpattern only instead of the full pattern.
Here's an example that may power a fast LL parser with recursive descent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_descent_parser):

$pattern = "/<([\w]+)([^>]*?) (([\s]*\/>)| (>((([^<]*?|<\!\-\-.*?\-\->)| (?R))*)<\/\\1[\s]*>))/xsm";

The performances of a preg_match or preg_match_all function call over an avarage (x)HTML document are quite fast and may drive you to chose this way instead of classic DOM object methods, which have a lot of limits and are usually poor in performance with their workarounds, too.
I post a sample application in a brief function (easy to be turned into OOP), which returns an array of objects:

<?php
// test function:
function parse($html) {
    // I have split the pattern in two lines not to have long lines alerts by the PHP.net form:
    $pattern = "/<([\w]+)([^>]*?)(([\s]*\/>)|".
    "(>((([^<]*?|<\!\-\-.*?\-\->)|(?R))*)<\/\\1[\s]*>))/sm";
    preg_match_all($pattern, $html, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
    $elements = array();
    
    foreach ($matches[0] as $key => $match) {
        $elements[] = (object)array(
            'node' => $match[0],
            'offset' => $match[1],
            'tagname' => $matches[1][$key][0],
            'attributes' => isset($matches[2][$key][0]) ? $matches[2][$key][0] : '',
            'omittag' => ($matches[4][$key][1] > -1), // boolean
            'inner_html' => isset($matches[6][$key][0]) ? $matches[6][$key][0] : ''
        );
    }
    return $elements;
}

// random html nodes as example:
$html = <<<EOD
<div id="airport">
    <div geo:position="1.234324,3.455546" class="index">
        <!-- comment test:
        <div class="index_top" />
        -->
        <div class="element decorator">
                <ul class="lister">
                    <li onclick="javascript:item.showAttribute('desc');">
                        <h3 class="outline">
                            <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/regexp.reference.recursive.php" onclick="openPopup()">Link</a>
                        </h3>
                        <div class="description">Sample description</div>
                    </li>
                </ul>
        </div>
        <div class="clean-line"></div>
    </div>
</div>
<div id="omittag_test" rel="rootChild" />
EOD;

// application:
$elements = parse($html);

if (count($elements) > 0) {
    echo "Elements found: <b>".count($elements)."</b><br />";
    
    foreach ($elements as $element) {
        echo "<p>Tpl node: <pre>".htmlentities($element->node)."</pre>
        Tagname: <tt>".$element->tagname."</tt><br />
        Attributes: <tt>".$element->attributes."</tt><br />
        Omittag: <tt>".($element->omittag ? 'true' : 'false')."</tt><br />
        Inner HTML: <pre>".htmlentities($element->inner_html)."</pre></p>";
    }
}
?>

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Onyxagargaryll ¶

14 years ago

Here's an approach to create a multidimensional array according to a string's delimiters, i.e. we want to analyze...

"some text (aaa(b(c1)(c2)d)e)(test) more text"

... as multidimensional layers.

<?php
$string = "some text (aaa(b(c1)(c2)d)e)(test) more text";

/*
 * Analyses the string multidimensionally by its opening and closing delimiters
 */
function recursiveSplit($string, $layer) {
    preg_match_all("/\((([^()]*|(?R))*)\)/",$string,$matches);
    // iterate thru matches and continue recursive split
    if (count($matches) > 1) {
        for ($i = 0; $i < count($matches[1]); $i++) {
            if (is_string($matches[1][$i])) {
                if (strlen($matches[1][$i]) > 0) {
                    echo "<pre>Layer ".$layer.":   ".$matches[1][$i]."</pre><br />";
                    recursiveSplit($matches[1][$i], $layer + 1);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

recursiveSplit($string, 0);

/*

Output:

Layer 0:   aaa(b(c1)(c2)d)e

Layer 1:   b(c1)(c2)d

Layer 2:   c1

Layer 2:   c2

Layer 0:   test
*/
?>

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Anonymous ¶

9 years ago

sass parse sample

<?php

$data = 'a { b { 1 } c { d { 2 } } }';

preg_match('/a (?<R>\{(?:[^{}]+|(?&R))*\})/', $data, $m);
preg_match('/b (?<R>\{(?:[^{}]+|(?&R))*\})/', $data, $m);
preg_match('/c (?<R>\{(?:[^{}]+|(?&R))*\})/', $data, $m);
preg_match('/d (?<R>\{(?:[^{}]+|(?&R))*\})/', $data, $m);

/*
Array (
    [0] => a { b { 1 } c { d { 2 } } }
    [R] => { b { 1 } c { d { 2 } } }
    [1] => { b { 1 } c { d { 2 } } }
)
Array (
    [0] => b { 1 }
    [R] => { 1 }
    [1] => { 1 }
)
Array (
    [0] => c { d { 2 } }
    [R] => { d { 2 } }
    [1] => { d { 2 } }
)
Array (
    [0] => d { 2 }
    [R] => { 2 }
    [1] => { 2 }
)
*/

down

mzvarik at gmail dot com ¶

4 years ago

This regexp can be used for parsing IF conditions.

$str = '
(IF_MYVAR)My var is printed
(OR_MYVARTWO)My var two is printed
(OR_ANOTHER)if you use OR you don't have to END everytime
(ELSE)Whatever bro(END)

(IF_BLUE)Something (IF_SUPERB)super(END) blue - this is simple IF condition(END)
';

function isCondition($k) {
    // put your user conditions here
    $conds = [];
    $conds['BLUE'] = true;
    $conds['MYVARTWO'] = true;
    $conds['ELSE'] = true; // always true
     return $conds[$k];
}

function findConditions($str) {
    
    $pattern = '~ \(if_([^\)]+)\) ((?: (?!\((end|if_)). | (?R) )*+) \(end\) ~xis';
    
    $str = preg_replace_callback($pattern, function($m) {
        
        $k = $m[1];
        $v = $m[2];
        $v = findConditions($v) ?: $v;
        
        $ors = preg_split('~(?=\((OR_[^\)]+|ELSE))~is', $v);
        
        $v = array_shift($ors); // hlavní
                
        if (isCondition($k)) return findConditions($v);
        else {
            foreach ($ors as $or) {
                list($k, $v) = explode(")", $or, 2);
                $k = substr($k, 1);
                if (isCondition($k)) return findConditions($v);
            }
        }
        return ''; // no matching condition
    }, $str);
    return $str;
};

// will output:  Whatever bro  \n\n  Something blue
echo findConditions($str);

down

jonah at nucleussystems dot com ¶

14 years ago

An unexpected behavior came up that introduced a very hard-to-track bug in some code I was working on.  It has to do with the preg_match_all PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE flag.  When you capture the offset of a sub-match, it's offset is given _relative_ to it's parent.  For example, if you extract the value between < and > recursively in this string:

<this is a <string>>

You will get an array that looks like this:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => <this is a <string>>
            [1] => 0
        )
        [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => this is a <string>
            [1] => 1
        )
    )
    [1] => Array
    (
        [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => <string>
            [1] => 0
        )
        [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => string
            [1] => 1
        )
    )
)

Notice that the offset in the last index is one, not the twelve we expected.  The best way to solve this problem is to run over the results with a recursive function, adding the parent's offset.

down

-1

Daniel Klein ¶

13 years ago

The order of non-mutually exclusive alternatives within a recursed sub-pattern is important.
<?php
$pattern = '/^(?<octet>[01]?\d?\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])(?:\.(?P>octet)){3}$/';
?>

You might expect that this pattern will match any IP address in dotted-decimal notation (e.g. '123.45.67.89'). The pattern is intended to match four octets in the following ranges: 0-9, 00-99 & 000-255, each separated by a single dot. However, only the first octet can include values from 200-255; the remainder can only have values less than 200. The reason for this is that if the rest of the pattern fails, recursion is not back-tracked into to find an alternative match. The first part of the sub-pattern will match the first two digits of any octet from 200-255. The rest of the pattern will then fail because the third digit in the octet does not match either '\.' or '$'.

<?php
var_export(preg_match($pattern, '255.123.45.67')); // 1 (true)
var_export(preg_match($pattern, '255.200.45.67')); // 0 (false)
var_export(preg_match($pattern, '255.123.45.200')); // 0 (false)
?>

The correct pattern is:
<?php
$pattern = '/^(?<octet>25[0-5]|2[0-4]\d|[01]?\d?\d)(?:\.(?P>octet)){3}$/';
?>

Note that the first two alternatives are mutually exclusive so their order is unimportant. The third alternative, however, is not mutually exclusive but it will now only match when the first two fail.

<?php
var_export(preg_match($pattern, '255.123.45.67')); // 1 (true)
var_export(preg_match($pattern, '255.200.45.67')); // 1 (true)
var_export(preg_match($pattern, '255.123.45.200')); // 1 (true)
?>

down

-1

horvath at webarticum dot hu ¶

12 years ago

Below are some reusable patterns. I used comments with the 'x' modifier for human-readability.

You can write also a function, that generates patterns for specified bracket/quote pairs.

<?php

/* normal paretheses */
$simple_pattern = "(    (?#root pattern)
  (                     (?#text or expression)
    (?>[^\\(\\)]+)      (?#text)
    |
    \\((?-2)\\)         (?#expression and recursion)
  )*
)";

$simple_okay_text = "5( 2a + (b - c) ) - a * ( 2b - (c * 3(b - (c + a) ) ) )";
$simple_bad_text = "5( 2)a + (b - c) ) - )a * ( ((2b - (c * 3(b - (c + a) ) ) )";

echo "Simple pattern results:\n";
var_dump(preg_match("/^$simple_pattern\$/x",$simple_okay_text));
var_dump(preg_match("/^$simple_pattern\$/x",$simple_bad_text));
echo "\n----------\n";

/* some brackets */
$full_pattern = "(                  (?#root pattern)
  (                                 (?#text or expression)
    (?>[^\\(\\)\\{\\}\\[\\]<>]+)    (?#text not contains brackets)
    |
    (
      [\\(\\{\\[<]                  (?#start bracket)
        (?(?<=\\()(?-3)\\)|           (?#if normal)
        (?(?<=\\{)(?-3)\\}|           (?#if coursed)
        (?(?<=\\[)(?-3)\\]|           (?#if squared)
        (?1)\\>                       (?#else so if tag)
      )))                           (?#close nested-but-logically-the-some-level subpatterns)
    )
  )*
)";

$full_okay_text = "5( 2a + [b - c] ) - a * ( 2b - {c * 3<b - (c + a) > } )";
$full_bad_text = "5[ 2a + [b - c} ) - a * ( 2b - [c * 3(b - c + a) ) ) }";

echo "Full pattern results:\n";
var_dump(preg_match("/^$full_pattern\$/x",$simple_okay_text));
var_dump(preg_match("/^$full_pattern\$/x",$full_okay_text));
var_dump(preg_match("/^$full_pattern\$/x",$full_bad_text));
echo "\n----------\n";

/* some brackets and quotes */
$extrafull_pattern = "(             (?#root pattern)
  (                                 (?#text or expression)
    (?>[^\\(\\)\\{\\}\\[\\]<>'\"]+) (?#text not contains brackets and quotes)
    |
    (
      ([\\(\\{\\[<'\"])             (?#start bracket)
        (?(?<=\\()(?-4)\\)|           (?#if normal)
        (?(?<=\\{)(?-4)\\}|           (?#if coursed)
        (?(?<=\\[)(?-4)\\]|           (?#if squared)
        (?(?<=\\<)(?-4)\\>|           (?#if tag)
        ['\"]                         (?#else so if static)
      ))))                          (?#close nested-but-logically-the-some-level subpatterns)
    )
  )*
)";

$extrafull_okay_text = "5( 2a + ['b' - c] ) - a * ( 2b - \"{c * 3<b - (c + a) > }\" )";
$extrafull_bad_text = "5( 2a + ['b' - c] ) - a * ( 2b - \"{c * 3<b - (c + a) > }\" )";

echo "Extra-full pattern results:\n";
var_dump(preg_match("/^$extrafull_pattern\$/x",$simple_okay_text));
var_dump(preg_match("/^$extrafull_pattern\$/x",$full_okay_text));
var_dump(preg_match("/^$extrafull_pattern\$/x",$extrafull_okay_text));
var_dump(preg_match("/^$extrafull_pattern\$/x",$extrafull_bad_text));

/*

Outputs:

Simple pattern results:
int(0)
int(0)

----------
Full pattern results:
int(0)
int(0)
int(0)

----------
Extra-full pattern results:
int(0)
int(0)
int(0)
int(0)

*/

?>

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