PROSE – Pattern Inspector

The Matching.Text API is accessed through the Matching.Text.Session class. The input strings are added using Session.Constraints.Add(). Once the inputs are added, calling Session.LearnPatterns() returns a list of PatternInfo objects that describe each pattern.

Each PatternInfo object either has:

The IsNull field set to true that indicates that the pattern matches only null strings, or
The IsNull field set to false, and the strings that match the pattern are those that match the regular expression in the Regex field and do not match the regular expressions in the RegexesToExclude field.

The other fields indicate the frequency of the pattern (MatchingFraction), a description in a PROSE specific format (Description), and a few examples of the input strings matched by the pattern (Examples).

Basic usage

using Microsoft.ProgramSynthesis.Matching.Text;

Session session = new Session();

IEnumerable inputs = new[] {
 "21-Feb-73",
 "2 January 1920a ",
 "4 July 1767 ",
 "1892",
 "11 August 1897 ",
 "11 November 1889 ",
 "9-Jul-01",
 "17-Sep-08",
 "10-May-35",
 "7-Jun-52",
 "24 July 1802 ",
 "25 April 1873 ",
 "24 August 1850 ",
 "Unknown ",
 "1058",
 "8 August 1876 ",
 "26 July 1165 ",
 "28 December 1843 ",
 "22-Jul-46",
 "17 January 1871 ",
 "17-Apr-38",
 "28 February 1812 ",
 "1903",
 "1915", 
 "1854",
 "9 May 1828 ",
 "28-Jul-32",
 "25-Feb-16",
 "19-Feb-40",
 "10-Oct-50",
 "5 November 1880 ",
 "1928",
 "13-Feb-03",
 "8-Oct-43",
 "1445",
 "8 July 1859 ",
 "25-Apr-27",
 "25 November 1562 ",
 "2-Apr-10", };
 
 session.Inputs.Add(inputs);
 IReadOnlyList patterns = session.LearnPatterns(); // Five patterns are returned corresponding to the formats "dd-MMM-yy", "dd MMMM yyyy ", "yyyy", "Unknown", and "2 January 1920a ".