Re^3: Putting the stringified Regexp object into code

[roboticus]

sedusedan:

The reason kennethk is wondering why you're avoiding closures is that much template-generated code can be easily replaced with a closure. Generally a string eval can be replaced with something better.

Munging strings to generate functions is certainly possible, and many have done it. But sometimes it's just easier to generate the function itself. An example (very loosely) based on your sample code:

$ cat t.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

# Function to accept only 4 digit numbers
my $v_4dig = gen_validator('^\d{4}$');

# Function to accept only 3 digit numbers
my $v_3dig = gen_validator('^\d{3}$');

# Function to accept only lower-case alphabetic strings
my $v_alpha = gen_validator('^[a-z]+$');

for my $t ('apple', 123, 456, 7890) {
    print "$t:\t", $v_4dig->($t), "\t", $v_3dig->($t), "\t", $v_alpha-
+>($t), "\n";
}

sub gen_validator {

    my $regex = shift;

    # Create function to validate against current regex
    return sub {
        my $data = shift;
        return 1 if ! defined $data;
        if (ref $data eq '') {
            return 1 if $data =~ /$regex/;
        }
        return 0;
    }
}

$ perl t.pl
apple:  0       0       1
123:    0       1       0
456:    0       1       0
7890:   1       0       0

Update: Added the third validator function example, just for variety. Also added a couple of comments.

Update: Re-read thread and properly attributed suggestion.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.