[regex-coach] Couple minor feature suggestions

[DJ]

Hi Regex-coach,

The example on, "http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/tutorial18.html",
and the Regex Coach Step feature have been helpful, especially in
understanding backtracking.

I have a couple minor feature suggestions.

1) Step Tab
Keep track of and display the number of times the "Next Step"
button is clicked, and append it to the message, like:

    19) Sub-match from 2 to 3

2) Info Tab
At first glance I thought regex-coach Info pane didn't explain
lookahead/lookbehind because of the message, "The selection is
invalid", but then I extended the selection. The regular expression I
used was, "(?<=\d)(?=(\d\d\d)+(?!\d))".  Perhaps the text could
provide a suggestion, like: "Did you mean "(?<=\d)"", when a user
selects an incomplete expression like "?<=".

When I selected "?:" or "(?:[a]*b|a+ac)", in "(?:[a]*b|a+ac)y", no
additional information was provided in the Info Pane for the Group No
Capture.  Although the Control Tab does represent that, it would be
nice if it were reflected in the Info pane too.

3) File menu
Add a Clear menu item that would clear the current contents of the
Regular expression pane and the Target string pane. If not Clear,
maybe Reset or New.

    File | Clear (Alt+C) maybe?
Or
    File | Clear | Both   (Alt+C)
    File | Clear | Regular expression pane
    File | Clear | Target string pane

4) File menu
Rather than relying on which pane has the focus, add a specific
submenu to "File | Insert File" to position the text, like:

    File | Insert File | Regular expression pane
    File | Insert File | Target string pane

Maybe extend this to Save too.

    File | Save | Both
    File | Save | Regular expression pane
    File | Save | Target string pane

Very nice.  I haven't touched LISP since my college days (I still have
my "Learning LISP" handbook :-) and it was fun to see it used.

Thank you.

-- 
__________________________     
DJ