Interpreting escape characters entered by user, best method?

[deano]

Hi,
I have the situation where I need a user to be able to set a (some) characters to either separate fields or end a line in an input interpreter. Once I have a set of RegExp matches (QStringList), I then write them out. I have added options for the user to set how they want the fields separated and then the lines ended, the code to do it looks something like;

QByteArray result;
if(-1 != regExpMatcher.indexIn(regExpBuffer.constData()))
{
  regExpBuffer.clear();
  QStringList captures = regExpMatcher.capturedTexts();
  int numberOfCaps = captures.size();
  if(numberOfCaps > 1)
  {
    for(int i=1; i < numberOfCaps; i++)
    {
      result.append(captures.at(i));
      if(i != (numberOfCaps-1))
        result.append(seperator.toAscii());
    }
  }
  else
    result.append(captures.at(0));
  result.append(lineEnd.toAscii());
}

QByteArray result;
if(-1 != regExpMatcher.indexIn(regExpBuffer.constData()))
{
  regExpBuffer.clear();
  QStringList captures = regExpMatcher.capturedTexts();
  int numberOfCaps = captures.size();
  if(numberOfCaps > 1)
  {
    for(int i=1; i < numberOfCaps; i++)
    {
      result.append(captures.at(i));
      if(i != (numberOfCaps-1))
        result.append(seperator.toAscii());
    }
  }
  else
    result.append(captures.at(0));
  result.append(lineEnd.toAscii());
}

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My problem is, if a user wants to enter a TAB as the seperator '\t' or some variant of a newline '\r\n'. How do I easily parse their input? What I would LOVE is something similar to the way the RegExps are done, some one character escapes for the common ones \0x00 (or \0xxx) for others. Of course I could write a parser, but surely there is an easy 'QT way' for this?

Any ideas?

[deano]

Ok, so this may not be the 'best' method but it was easy enough and does the job as far as I am concerned.
Looking at the QByteArray there is a method 'fromPercentEncoding', I used it like

seperator = QByteArray::fromPercentEncoding(ui->yourInput->text().toAscii(), '\\');
lineEnd = QByteArray::fromPercentEncoding(ui->yourOtherInput->text().toAscii(), '\\');

seperator = QByteArray::fromPercentEncoding(ui->yourInput->text().toAscii(), '\\');
lineEnd = QByteArray::fromPercentEncoding(ui->yourOtherInput->text().toAscii(), '\\');

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Then to add it to output....

QByteArray result;
if(-1 != regExpMatcher.indexIn(regExpBuffer.constData()))
{
  regExpBuffer.clear();
  QStringList captures = regExpMatcher.capturedTexts();
  int numberOfCaps = captures.size();
  if(numberOfCaps > 1)
  {
    captures.removeAt(0);
    result += captures.join(seperator.constData()).toAscii();
  }
  else
    result.append(captures.at(0));
  result.append(lineEnd);
}

QByteArray result;
if(-1 != regExpMatcher.indexIn(regExpBuffer.constData()))
{
  regExpBuffer.clear();
  QStringList captures = regExpMatcher.capturedTexts();
  int numberOfCaps = captures.size();
  if(numberOfCaps > 1)
  {
    captures.removeAt(0);
    result += captures.join(seperator.constData()).toAscii();
  }
  else
    result.append(captures.at(0));
  result.append(lineEnd);
}

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I would still be interested if anyone has other ideas, but this seemed simple enough to me.