intxeger 0.1.1
Generate unique strings from regular expressions.
License: MIT license
Requires Python: >=3.6
Keywords: intxeger

# IntXeger

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IntXeger (pronounced "integer") is a Python library for generating strings from regular
expressions. It was inspired by the [xeger](https://github.com/crdoconnor/xeger) library but 
provides additional features such as:

* Faster than both [xeger](https://github.com/crdoconnor/xeger) and [exrex](https://github.com/asciimoo/exrex).
* Array-like indexing for mapping integers to strings which match the regex.
* Sampling-without-replacement for generating a set of unique strings which match the regex.

These features make `IntXeger` perfect for applications such as generating unique 
identifiers, producing matching strings sequentially, and more!

## Installation
You can install the latest stable release of IntXeger by running:

```bash
pip install intxeger
```

## Quick Start

Let's start with a simple example where our regex specifies a two-character string
that only contains lowercase letters.

```python
import intxeger
x = intxeger.build("[a-z]{2}")
```

You can check the number of strings that can be generated with this string using 
the `length` attribute and generate the `i`th string which matches using the `get(i)`
method.

```python
assert x.length == 26**2 # there are 676 unique strings which match this regex
assert x.get(15) == 'ap' # the 15th unique string is 'ap'
```

Furthermore, you can generate `N` unique strings which match this regex using the
`sample(N)` method. Note that `N` must be less than or equal to the length.

```python
print(x.sample(N=10))
# ['xt', 'rd', 'jm', 'pj', 'jy', 'sp', 'cm', 'ag', 'cb', 'yt']
```

Here's a more complicated regex which specifies a timestamp.

```python
x = intxeger.build(r"(1[0-2]|0[1-9])(:[0-5]\d){2} (A|P)M")
print(x.sample(N=2))
# ['11:57:12 AM', '01:16:01 AM']
```

To learn more about the functionality provided by `IntXeger`, check out our 
[documentation](https://k15z.github.io/IntXeger)!

## Benchmark
This table, generated by `benchmark.py`, shows the amount of time in 
milliseconds required to generate `N` examples of each regular expression
using `xeger` and `intxeger`.

| regex                                           |    N |   xeger |   exrex |   intxeger |
|:------------------------------------------------|-----:|--------:|--------:|-----------:|
| [a-zA-Z]+                                       |  100 |    7.36 |    3.17 |       1.09 |
| [0-9]{3}-[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}                      |  100 |   11.59 |    6.25 |       0.8  |
| [0-9A-F]{4}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[0-9A-F]{4} | 1000 |  208.62 |   91.3  |      18.28 |
| /json/([0-9]{4})/([a-z]{4})                     | 1000 |  133.36 |  107.01 |      12.18 |

Have a regular expression that isn't represented here? Check out our 
[Contributing Guide](https://k15z.github.io/IntXeger/contributing.html) and
submit a pull request!