Re: TMCL Regexp constraint

Am 18.11.2010 um 21:59 schrieb Lars Marius Garshol:

> * Robert Cerny
>>
>> I am wondering how the TMCL Regular Expression constraint [1]  
>> should be applied:
>>
>> a. the boundaries are implicit
>> b. the boundaries are explicit
>>
>> E.g. i want all lower case characters in my string:
>>
>> Should the value of the respective occurrence of the topic that  
>> represents my regexp constraint be:
>> a. [a-z]+
>> b. ^[a-z]+$
>
> Very good question. Unfortunately, the answer to your question has  
> been well hidden. What it means to match a regular expression is  
> defined here:
>
> http://www.isotopicmaps.org/tmcl/tmcl.html#d0e539
>
> Following the links you get to:
>   http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xmlschema-2-20041028/#regexs
>
> which says:
>
>> Unlike some popular regular expression languages (including those  
>> defined by Perl and standard Unix utilities), the regular  
>> expression language defined here implicitly anchors all regular  
>> expressions at the head and tail, as the most common use of  
>> regular expressions in ·pattern· is to match entire literals.
>
> So the answer to your question is (b), which IMHO is as it should be.

Thanks for leading the way to the well hidden answer. I agree that it  
should be that way. But i must admit the example threw me off and  
would suggest a change so that it becomes clearer. The current  
example matches any string which *contains* a phone number. I think a  
better example would be any string that *is* a phone number.

Best,

Robert