As I have to write a simulation program and simulate for a hugh amount of data, some sort of automation is required. I store all the simulation result into a text file and there are millions (really millions, I am serious!) of files, I want to loop around the directory and extract the data to put into a graph.
For the first step, I need an engine to parse the output. Regular Expression is the right tool. I have searched for many kinds of regex libraries, some are powerful but complicated to use, some are intuitive but not flexible. I’ve include their links at the bottom of this page.
Finally, I deicided to use Perl-Compative Regular Expression (PCRE) package. This is a C library and use the Perl regex syntax. Powerful enough and easy to use (for me). As I am writing a C++ program, there is a PCRE wrapper called PME.
PCRE and PME are recommended. Sample code of PME are as follows, more from the web:
PME* regex;
regex = new PME("^=+$");
if (regex->match(string)!=0) {
// Line found
};