Patterns

Some definitions

range

is an Excel range, delimited with a top, a left, a right and a bottom. A sheet is an example of a range.

line

is a row or a column. This is decided by the chosen layout: horizontal layouts will yield rows, vertical will yield columns.

pattern

is an object that matches the given range or line(s). If the match fails, the method raises a DoesntMatchException. If it succeeds, it fills up the context given as a parameter.

Note that patterns can be passed as arguments to the upper level pattern as object or classes. Classes will be instatianted.

There are 3 types of patterns:

Workbook

This pattern will be called to match a workbook:

Ranges

The following patterns match either the whole sheet or a range:

Layout is Rows or Columns, and will be used to know if the range should be read horizontally or vertically.

Iterators of lines

These patterns are called on an iterator of lines, and will be passed as parameters to Range patterns or other patterns matching iterators of lines.

These patterns can be combined with the operator +, which returns a Sequence. a+b is equivalent to Sequence(a,b). Similarly, a|b is equivalent to OrPattern(a,b).

The name of the pattern is used by the ResultContext to store the matched element. The existing patterns that operate on an line iterator are:

Stop tests

Stop tests are functions that are passed to FlexibleRange and Table to detect the end of a block. You can create your own and pass it as a parameter to the pattern.