13

Can I get the string with regular expression from std::regex? Or should I save it somewhere else if I want to use it later?

In boost you can do this:

boost::regex reg("pattern");
string p = reg.str();

or use << operator

cout << reg; will print pattern.

but in std::regex there is no str() or operator<<. Should I save my string somewhere else or I just can't find it?

In debugger I can see what's in std::regex.

1
  • Please edit this question, I very much doubt that given "pattern" it will print aaa. Commented Dec 21, 2010 at 18:58

2 Answers 2

9

I just looked in N3225, section 28.4 (header <regex> synopsis) and indeed, the basic_regex template has no member function str, and there are no operator<< provided.

The paragraph 28.8/2 provides a little insight on this :

Objects of type specialization of basic_regex are responsible for converting the sequence of charT objects to an internal representation. It is not specified what form this representation takes, nor how it is accessed by algorithms that operate on regular expressions.

What I understand is that the standard mandates that basic_regex can be constructed from const charT * but does not require the implementation to keep this string.

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

4

The MSDN docs seem to show that there's no publicly accessible way to retrieve the regex pattern from a constructed object, so I would say that you need to save the string yourself.

Comments

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.