cucumber-expressions: Matching a literal open-parenthesis

[jamis]

Summary

I'm using cucumber as a platform-agnostic way to describe an API in a book I'm writing, which is perhaps a bit out-of-the-ordinary for cucumber, but so far has worked great. Upgrading to 3.x has proven awkward, though, as many of my steps involve describing function calls, with parameters lists enclosed in parentheses, like so:

Scenario: Subtracting two vectors
  Given v1 := vector(3, 2, 1)
    And v2 := vector(5, 6, 7)
  Then v1 - v2 = vector(-2, -4, -6)

While I can represent this with a raw regex, the cucumber expressions are beautifully convenient. Sadly, given a step definition like this:

Given("{word} := vector({float}, {float}, {float})") do |var, x, y, z|
  # ...
end

The parentheses are being interpreted as optional groups. Is there already a way to escape those, so they can be interpreted literally?

Expected Behavior

I would expect there to be a way to escape parentheses in cucumber expressions, so that they can be interpreted literally.

Current Behavior

There does not currently appear to be a way to escape parentheses in cucumber expressions.

Possible Solution

Consider OPTIONAL_REGEXP, here:

https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber/blob/fc5308ff70378277cfbe6a56d102c5a8c42be69f/cucumber-expressions/ruby/lib/cucumber/cucumber_expressions/cucumber_expression.rb#L11

If this were made a bit more sophisticated, it could be made to ignore parentheses that are prefixed by an escape character (a backslash comes to mind, but maybe there's something else that is more idiomatic to Cucumber?)

Your Environment

• Version used: 5.0.13 (Ruby)
• Operating System and version: macOS 10.13.3

[aslakhellesoy]

Hi @jamis!

This sounds like a dupe of #107, which we decided not to prioritise. Now, if you submit a PR that's a different story - I'd be happy to add it if you did! Using \ for escaping would be fine.

[jamis]

Ah, sorry I missed that ticket! I promise I did try to do my due-diligence before posting. :) PR is incoming, look for it in a few. Thanks!

[aslakhellesoy]

Closed by 3c38076

[lock]

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