Building a dynamic regular expression from sampled data

A computing device configured to automatically generate a regular expression that matches a list of input strings, the computing device comprising:

• a memory;
• and
• a processor coupled to the memory, the memory and processor being configured to:
• obtain the list of input strings;
• identify a set of baseline regular expression classes that each match at least a portion of at least one input string of the list of input strings, each baseline regular expression class being a representation of a corresponding type of character;
• generate a current regular expression as a sequence of baseline regular expression classes from the set of baseline regular expression classes based on matching baseline regular expression classes to characters of a first input string of the list of input strings;
• determine whether the current regular expression matches all input strings of the list of input strings;
• when the current regular expression matches all input strings of the list of input strings, set the current regular expression as the regular expression;
• and
• when the current regular expression does not match one or more input strings of the list of input strings, regenerate a portion of the current regular expression that occurs after an earliest character, in order, of one of the one or more input strings, that does not match the current regular expression.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a computing device cause the computing device to perform a method of automatically generating a regular expression that matches a list of input strings, the method comprising:

• obtaining the list of input strings;
• identifying a set of baseline regular expression classes that each match at least a portion of at least one input string of the list of input strings, each baseline regular expression class being a representation of a corresponding type of character;
• generating a current regular expression as a sequence of baseline regular expression classes from the set of baseline regular expression classes based on matching baseline regular expression classes to characters of a first input string of the list of input strings;
• determining whether the current regular expression matches all input strings of the list of input strings;
• when the current regular expression matches all input strings of the list of input strings, setting the current regular expression as the regular expression;
• and
• when the current regular expression does not match one or more input strings of the list of input strings, regenerating a portion of the current regular expression that occurs after an earliest character, in order, of one of the one or more input strings, that does not match the current regular expression.