C++ Regex Alpha without Equal sign - c++

Question

im new to Regex and C++.
My problem is, that '=' is matching when I search for [a-zA-Z]. But this is only a-z without '='?
Can anyone help me please?
string string1 = "s=s;";
enum states state = s1;
regex statement("[a-zA-Z]+[=][a-zA-Z0-9]+[;]");
regex rg_left_letter("[a-zA-Z]");
regex rg_equal("[=]");
regex rg_right_letter("[a-zA-Z0-9]");
regex rg_semicolon("[;]");
for (const auto &s : string1) {
cout << "Current Value: " << s << endl;
// step(&state, s);
if (regex_search(&s, rg_left_letter)) {
cout << "matching: " << s << endl;
} else {
cout << "not matching: " << s << endl;
}
// cout << "Step Executed with sate: " << state << endl;
}
This outputs:
Current Value: s
matching: s
Current Value: =
matching: =
Current Value: s
matching: s
Current Value: ;
not matching: ;

Answer 1

When you write
regex_search(&s, rg_left_letter)
you basically search the C-String &s for a match character-wise, beginning at the character s. Therefore, your loop will search for a match in the remaining sub-strings
s=s;
=s;
s;
;
Which will always succeed, except in the last case, as there is always one character in the entire string that fits your regex. Note however that this assumes that std::string has some 0-termination added, which is, as far as I can tell, not guaranteed if you do not explicitely use the c_str() method, making your code UB.
What you really want to use is the function regex_match, together with your original regex just as simple as:
#include <iostream>
#include <regex>
int main()
{
std::regex statement("[a-zA-Z]+[=][a-zA-Z0-9]+[;]");
if(std::regex_match("s=s;", statement)) { std::cout << "Hooray!\n"; }
}

Answer 2

This is working for me:
int main(void) {
string string1 = "s=s;";
enum states state = s1;
regex statement("[a-zA-Z]+[=][a-zA-Z0-9]+[;]");
regex rg_left_letter("[a-zA-Z]");
regex rg_equal("[=]");
regex rg_right_letter("[a-zA-Z0-9]");
regex rg_semicolon("[;]");
//for (const auto &s : string1) {
for (int i = 0; i < string1.size(); i++) {
cout << "Current Value: " << string1[i] << endl;
// step(&state, s);
if (regex_match(string1.substr(i, 1), rg_left_letter)) {
cout << "matching: " << string1[i] << endl;
} else {
cout << "not matching: " << string1[i] << endl;
}
// cout << "Step Executed with sate: " << state << endl;
}
cout << endl;
return 0;
}