Re: [Boost-users] [regex] converting a wildcard expr into a regex

I would like to implement matching of SQL-LIKE clauses by Boost regex. I need to convert strings like "HEL_LO%" into something regex("HEL.LO.*"). As the LIKE-string might contain characters like '.', '+* etc these need to be escaped: "HE+LO%" -> regex("HE\+LO.*").

Another example are shell globs where * and ? take the place of % and _.

One way is to write a regex to change your input syntax to a perl regex: std::string dos_wildcard_to_regex(std::string s) { static const boost::regex e("([.\\[{()\\+|^$])|(?)|(*)"); return regex_replace(s, e, "(?1\\$1)(?2.)(?3.*)", match_default | format_all); } Which relies on the "conditional search and replace" built into Boost.Regex. HTH, John.