Mandatory + arbitrary order
2015. 10. 29.
What regular expression pattern would you use if you want to match a word with mandatory characters in it but in arbitrary order?

You cannot use character set like [abc] because this pattern does not garanties the mandatoryness, even if you write the exact number of it [abc]{3}. It will match three a characters too. You cannot force the regular expression engine to handle arbitrary order with the mandatory constraint. You have to do it yourself with permutation.

You have to tell the regexp engine that you want allow all the possible permutation of a character list, with optional charachters between them. You can do it with options.

For example, if you want to match words that has a and b in them in arbitrary order, you can write:

((.*a.*b.*)|(.*b.*a.*))


It isn’t so horrible, is it. But. We are talking about permutation. If you want to add 3 characters, the pattern length will increase:

((.*a.*b.*c.*)|
(.*a.*c.*b.*)|
(.*b.*a.*c.*)|
(.*b.*c.*a.*)|
(.*c.*a.*b.*)|
(.*c.*b.*a.*))


For 4 characters, it reaches the 409 charachters length:

((.*a.*b.*c.*d.*)|
(.*a.*b.*d.*c.*)|
(.*a.*c.*b.*d.*)|
(.*a.*c.*d.*b.*)|
(.*a.*d.*b.*c.*)|
(.*a.*d.*c.*b.*)|
(.*b.*a.*c.*d.*)|
(.*b.*a.*d.*c.*)|
(.*b.*c.*a.*d.*)|
(.*b.*c.*d.*a.*)|
(.*b.*d.*a.*c.*)|
(.*b.*d.*c.*a.*)|
(.*c.*a.*b.*d.*)|
(.*c.*a.*d.*b.*)|
(.*c.*b.*a.*d.*)|
(.*c.*b.*d.*a.*)|
(.*c.*d.*a.*b.*)|
(.*c.*d.*b.*a.*)|
(.*d.*a.*b.*c.*)|
(.*d.*a.*c.*b.*)|
(.*d.*b.*a.*c.*)|
(.*d.*b.*c.*a.*)|
(.*d.*c.*a.*b.*)|
(.*d.*c.*b.*a.*))


# Generator in python ¶

You can write a generator for this regexp pattern easily in python:

from itertools import permutations
import re

def generate_mandatory_arbitrary(content):
pattern_string = '('
for p in permutations(content):
pattern_string += '(.*'
for i in p:
pattern_string += '{}.*'.format(i)
pattern_string += ')|'
return pattern_string[:-1] + ')'

print(generate_mandatory_arbitrary('abc'))