Ideas for future redesign

[slevithan]

• Update supported syntax to include features and escaping rules from JavaScript flag v (ES2024).
• Rewrite on top of an AST (regexpp, regexp-tree, etc.).
• Consider becoming a TextMate grammar, Tree-sitter grammar, or CodeMirror mode (see CodeMirror PCRE mode).
  • Potentially extract RegExr's highlighting/tooltips as a starting point.
• Add more options to the options argument used by colorizeAll and colorizePattern:
  • flavor - Ex: 'JavaScript', 'EMCAScript' (for JavaScript without "web reality"), 'PCRE', 'XRegExp', 'Regex+'.
    • Default: 'JavaScript'.
    • Use the latest known version for the flavor if version is not provided.
  • version - Regex flavor version. Ex: JavaScript/ECMAScript: '3', '5', '2024'; PCRE: '8.45', '10.39'.
    • Default: 'latest'.
    • Throw if unexpected value or if flavor is not provided.
    • Potential implementation: By using e.g. 'JavaScript'+'2024', it sets of bunch of feature flags, and parsing code can check for the feature flags rather than flavor/version. New flavor versions can then just augment existing objects of feature flags.
  • format - Options: '...' (default), '/.../flags', and maybe others.
    • '/.../flags' allows:
      1. Applying flags (can change syntax rules).
      2. Highlighting invalid flags/combinations and duplicates.
      3. Changing syntax rules, independent of flags: Only need to escape / in regex literals. Note: ES5 included a change to allow unescaped [/] in regex literals.
    • Throw if both format and flags are provided.
  • warningsOn - On by default? Ex: || at top level, range overflow, quantified lookaround, incomplete tokens \c,\x,\u.
  • compatibilityOn - For differences in behavior for the same syntax across regex flavors (not for when some flavors don't support a feature). Ex: Empty char classes [], [^] (JS), leading unescaped ] in char classes (non-JS).
  • suggestionsOn - Ex: Use of octals, escaped literals, [0-9] → \d (for flavors where \d is ASCII only), [\S\s] → dot with /s (if /s is active or no existing dots).
• Render whitespace characters.
• Add replacement text highlighting (also accepts options argument, with flavor, version, format).