How to do lookahead properly with LPeg

Question

To match a string starting with dog, followed by cat(but not consuming cat), this works:

local lpeg = require \'lpeg\'
loc         


        

Answer 1

You need to negate "cat" at each position in the lookahead that can match:

local patt2 = lpeg.C(lpeg.P"dog" * (lpeg.P(1)-lpeg.P"cat") ^ 1) * #lpeg.P"cat"

I think it's appropriate to plug the debugger I've been working on (pegdebug), as it helps in cases like this. Here is the output it generates for the original lpeg-expression:

+   Exp 1   "d"
 +  Dog 1   "d"
 =  Dog 1-3 "dog"
 +  Separator   4   " "
 =  Separator   4-11    " and cat"
 +  Cat 12  ""
 -  Cat 12
-   Exp 1

You can see that the Separator expression "eats" all the characters, including "cat" and there is nothing left to match against P"cat".

The output for the modified expression looks like this:

+   Exp 1   "d"
 +  Dog 1   "d"
 =  Dog 1-3 "dog"
 +  Separator   4   " "
 =  Separator   4-8 " and "
 +  Cat 9   "c"
 =  Cat 9-11    "cat"
=   Exp 1-8 "dog and "
/   Dog 1   0   
/   Separator   4   0   
/   Exp 1   1   "dog and "

Here is the full script:

require 'lpeg'
local peg = require 'pegdebug'
local str2 = 'dog and cat'
local patt2 = lpeg.P(peg.trace { "Exp";
  Exp = lpeg.C(lpeg.V"Dog" * lpeg.V"Separator") * #lpeg.V"Cat";
  Cat = lpeg.P("cat");
  Dog = lpeg.P("dog");
  Separator = (lpeg.P(1) - lpeg.P("cat"))^1;
})
print(lpeg.match(patt2, str2))