How to generate a number with the Regular Expression Generator?

About

This howto will show you how to generate a number with the Regular Expression Generator.

Steps

The regular expression

The following expression will generate a double:

[0-9]{3}\.[0-9]{3}

where:

• [0-9]{3} asks for 3 digits
• \. print a point
  • Note: \ is the escape character that tells the generator to take the dot character and not the regular expression dot matcher.
• [0-9]{3} asks for 3 digits

Create a generator

The generator would be then:

kind: generator
spec:
  maxRecordCount: 30
  columns:
    - name: regexp_double
      type: Double
      precision: 6
      scale: 3
      data-supplier:
        type: regexp
        arguments:
          expression: '[0-9]{3}\.[0-9]{3}'
          # optional seed
          seed: 12345L

Print the result

This generator would yield the following data:

tabul data print generator/regexp--generator.yml@howto

regexp_double
-------------
      453.377
      203.849
      813.079
      865.495
      390.441
      709.933
      255.284
       19.755
      261.175
      264.911
      133.327
      394.021
      614.462
      573.909
       86.925
      753.268
      457.839
      176.918
      393.803
      833.487
       582.82
       551.98
      810.125
      802.251
      783.176
      940.763
      817.757
       17.065
       320.67
      709.529