I am looking to find method names for python functions. I only want to find method names if they aren't after "def ". E.g.:
"def method_name(a, b):" # (should not match)
"y = method_name(1,2)" # (should find `method_name`)
My current regex is /\W(.*?)\(/.
str = "def no_match(a, b):\ny = match(1,2)"
str.scan(/(?<!def)\s+\w+(?=\()/).map(&:strip)
#⇒ ["match"]
The regex comments:
def,\w,Sidenote: one should never use regexps to parse long strings for any purpose.
I have assumed that lines that do not contain "def" are of the form "[something]=[zero or more spaces][method name]".
R1 = /
\bdef\b # match 'def' surrounded by word breaks
/x # free-spacing regex definition mode
R2 = /
[^=]+ # match any characters other than '='
= # match '='
\s* # match >= 0 whitespace chars
\K # forget everything matched so far
[a-z_] # match a lowercase letter or underscore
[a-z0-9_]* # match >= 0 lowercase letters, digits or underscores
[!?]? # possibly match '!' or '?'
/x
def match?(str)
(str !~ R1) && str[R2]
end
match?("def method_name1(a, b):") #=> false
match?("y = method_name2(1,2)") #=> "method_name2"
match?("y = method_name") #=> "method_name"
match?("y = method_name?") #=> "method_name?"
match?("y = def method_name") #=> false
match?("y << method_name") #=> nil
I chose to use two regexes to be able to deal with both my first and penultimate examples. Note that the method returns either a method name or a falsy value, but the latter may be either false or nil.
y = str[1..-1].upcase. Would you want the method[]=orupcasereturned? I suspect that the second line must have a particular form, but you have not said what that is. Is it always a variable, an equals sign, the method name (without syntactic sugar), as in your example? Please clarify by editing.