Exercising Regular Expressions and Arrays in Javascript

I've been working a bit with AJAX, and that soon prompted me to brush up on my Javascript. In the past I'd never used it to do more than a little validation or form "glue". Now revisiting the language from a true programmer's perspective, I recognise that it is pretty capable!

Speak Good Singlish! is a sample that gives regular expression and multi-dimensional array handling a good workout. It's a Singlish translator implemented in Javascript. I can't remember what sparked the idea to use this as an example, but somehow I got thinking back to ole "Jive" and "Valley girl" translators that have been floating around the net for many years.

The RegExp object usage in the sample is fairly standard, but the array handling is not.

I'm using a 2D array for the "lexicon" - basically a list of regex matches and replacements. For example the following fragment. You'll note that the second dimension can contain either a simple string or an array (as the replacement element):

var slexicon = [
[ '\\benglish\\b', 'Singlish' ] ,
[ '\\bdo\\b', [ 'do', 'do until sian', 'do sure can one' ] ]
];

There's a core routine that iterates through the array and performs the substitutions. Where an array substitution is present, it uses a funtion inline to pick a random element from the array to perform the substitution:

// do the translation
for (var i = 0; i < slexicon.length ; i++) {
var slexiconRow = slexicon[i];
var theRegex = new RegExp( slexiconRow[0], "gim" );
var theReplacement = slexiconRow[1];
if (theReplacement instanceof Array ) {
dataOut = dataOut.replace( theRegex, function (match) {return randomElement(theReplacement)} );
} else {
dataOut = dataOut.replace( theRegex, theReplacement );
}
}

The randomElement function is simplicity itself:

// returns random element of an array
var randomElement = new Function("x", "return x[Math.floor(Math.random() * (x.length))]");

The HTML page contains the whole script inline, so it is easy to review in-place with a "view source". Enjoy!