Converting a regular expression to a string in Ruby

Question

Is there a way of generating a string that would match a regular expression in Ruby

e.g.

regex           output
^\d{6}$         875914
^\d{3}-\w{2}    584-AS

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:27:37Z

2

From a response on a related SO question - Matt Aimonetti's randexp might be of some use. Not generalised to all regexp though...

EDIT: This version looks more up-to-date.

CommunityBot

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answered Dec 31, 2009 at 10:53

martin clayton

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2 Comments

Yes, that looks more promising than what I posted.

This gem looks sweet, going to look further into this.

Bart Kiers · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-31 10:42:28Z

1

I haven't tested it, but this looks like something you're looking for: http://code.google.com/p/xeger/

Note that I cannot believe it will handle more complex regex-es (using look-arounds, back-references, etc.). But again, I haven't tested it.

EDIT: sorry, I now just saw you're looking for a Ruby implementation...

answered Dec 31, 2009 at 10:42

Bart Kiers

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That is... interesting. Poorly documented though, and the 2 tests they have there don't reveal much...