.TH reg_assoc 3 "26 Dec 1994" MudOS "LPC Library Functions"

.SH NAME
reg_assoc() - A regular pattern substring extractor

.SH SYNOPSIS
mixed *reg_assoc(string str, string *pat_arr, mixed *tok_arr, 
void | mixed def);

.SH DESCRIPTION
reg_assoc takes a string and explodes it into substrings matching 
the regular expression pattern-strings given in pat_arr and associates
them with tokens given in tok_arr. If def (default 0) is given, it
is associated with a non-match. The return value is an array of
two arrays, the 1st being an array of the form 
.nf

	({ non-match1, match1, non-match2, match2, ..., 
	   non-match n, match n, non-match n+1 }) 

.fi
and the 2nd holds the tokens corresponding to the matches in order\:

	({ def, token corresponding to match1, ...., def, 
	   token corresponding to match n, def }).

pat_arr and tok_arr must be of the same sizes, the ith element in 
tok_arr being the corresponding token to the ith element of pat_arr. 
pat_arr can only hold strings. 

If pat_arr (and hence tok_arr) has size 0 then the return value is 
simply ({ ({ str }), ({ def }) }).

.SH EXAMPLE

.nf
#define STRING_PAT "\e"(\e\e\e\e.|[^\e\e\e"])*\e""
#define NUM_PAT "[0\-9]+"

#define F_STRING 1
#define F_NUM 2

reg_assoc("Blah \e"blah\e" test 203 hhh j 308 \e"bacdcd\eb\e"acb",
  ({ STRING_PAT, NUM_PAT }), ({ F_STRING, F_NUM }), "no-match")

will return 
({ ({ "Blah ", "\e"blah\e"", " test ", "203", " hhh j ", "308", " ",
      "\e"bacdcd\eb\e"", "acb" }),
   ({ "no-match", F_STRING, "no-match", F_NUM, "no-match", F_NUM, 
      "no-match", F_STRING, "no-match" }) })