Converting a regular expression to a string in Ruby

Question

Is there a way of generating a string that would match a regular expression in Ruby

e.g.

regex           output
^\d{6}$         875914
^\d{3}-\w{2}    584-AS

Answer 1

I haven't tested it, but this looks like something you're looking for: http://code.google.com/p/xeger/

Note that I cannot believe it will handle more complex regex-es (using look-arounds, back-references, etc.). But again, I haven't tested it.

EDIT: sorry, I now just saw you're looking for a Ruby implementation...

Answer 2

From a response on a related SO question - Matt Aimonetti's randexp might be of some use. Not generalised to all regexp though...

EDIT: This version looks more up-to-date.