Regex Composer

This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. It does not describe an actual complete program. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; I have too many other projects of my own.

I do contract work for a living, which could include writing a program such as this. However, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project any way you please.

Composing Regular Expressions is daunting for anyone but a dedicated geek. This program makes regexes accessible to the masses. There are several ways it could work:

Convert standard wild card expressions with * and ? into regexes.
Fill in the blanks selecting various standard patterns. The program builds a visual tree of what the regex does, with nodes where you can edit parameters. What to select, what to avoid, by check box, or ticking individual chars, or listing strings.
The user gives examples of what he wants and does not want to match. The program tries to deduce a regex that fits the examples. Then it generates examples that would fit and not fit. The user corrects the examples it got wrong, and it composes a new regex. Iteratively, you get a regex that is close enough to what you need.

The program might generate either:

a regex expression string.
a custom Java source program to parse that regex.
a custom Java byte code class to parse that regex.
A parse tree that is used by your own interpretive regex engine.

regex
Regex Debugger
Regex Proofreader
Regex Utility

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