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AOM C_STRING.pattern needs clarification on the regular expression language

Description

The description of C_STRING.pattern is very vague "Regular expression pattern for proposed instances of String to match." (https://specifications.openehr.org/releases/AM/Release-2.2.0/AOM1.4.html#_c_string_class).

Considering there are many regex languages with different features and levels of compatibility:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_regular-expression_engines#Language_features

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html#jcc

Though I'm sure our C_STRING.pattern values are not going to be complex regexes, different implementations could choose to use a different regex language, generating incompatibilities at the archetype level.

To avoid this we might:

1. Suggest a preferred language
2. Specify which subset of the regex language should be used
3. If 2. is really small, maybe we can add a syntax/grammar definition to the spec

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Created November 4, 2021 at 1:14 AM
Updated March 21, 2024 at 12:47 AM

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Thomas BealeNovember 4, 2021 at 8:41 AM

Usually PERL regex is what we assume in openEHR. I didn’t realise that was not stated in that part of the spec, so we’ll need to update that. Anyway, PREs allow \d, \w etc.