Re: regexMatch examples

[Rob Byrne - Sun Microsystems <Robert.Byrne@france.Sun.COM>]

Kurt,

For regex on  a dn, here's an example to say "match any value of a
particular RDN attribute".
eg. match each dn like "cn=admin,ou=X,o=sun.com" where the X will match
any, though just, the value of ou (which in particular may contain an
escaped comma).

A Unix extended regular expression for this matching is
"^uid=admin,ou=\([^,]*\\,\)*[^,]*,o=sun.com$"

Rob.

"Kurt D. Zeilenga" wrote:

> Example A
>
> User wants to return all entries which contain
> uid values shorter than 5 characters.
>
>   (uid:regexMatch:=^.{,5}$)
>
> Example B
>
> User wants to find all entries which contain name
> attributes with start or end with trailing white
> space or contain duplicate spaces.
>   (name:regexMatch:=\28^[:space:]|[:space:]{2,}|[:space:]$\29)
>
> Note required escaping.
>
> Example C
>
> User wants to match all names which contain
> a common immediately after the first word (such as
> "Smith, John" but not "John Smith, Jr.".   That is,
> match the the regex "^ *[^ ]*," or the filter:
> is (name:regexMatch:=^ \2a[^ ]\2a,).
>
> Example D
>
> User wants to match all values which start with A or B
> and end with C or D.  That is: should match the regex
>         ^(A|B).*(C|D)$
>
> This should match as follows:
>         #       value           match
>         1       A X             false
>         2       A X C           true
>         3       A X D           true
>         4       B X             false
>         5       B X C           true
>         6       B X D           true
>         7       X C             false
>         8       X D             false
>
> Now, lets say in within scope entries with attribute 'attr'
> each of which contains a subset of the following values
> and we want to return just those which contain a matching
> value, that is: (attr:regexMatch:=^\28A|B\29.\2a\28C|D\29$).
>
> This rather simple regex cannot be decomposed into a single
> substrings assertion, but could be decomposed into a complex
> filter:
>         (|(attr=A*C)(attr=A*D)(attr=B*C)(attr=B*D))
>
> Remarks:
>
> I do believe that most assertions made by Joe User can be
> (and should be) expressed without the need for extensible
> matching and, in particular, regexMatch.  However, regular
> expressions offer immense amount of power which can be applied
> to any string value and, as demonstrated above, can be used
> to make assertions which are not supported by existing
> rules.  Of course, as Mark pointed out, such power comes at
> a price.