The text analysis classes include a set of iterator classes that search through part or all of a text object to find a specific character pattern. This family of iterators searches through styled text, ignoring any styling information when pattern matching. You always specify the pattern as a text object. However, each concrete iterator class interprets the pattern in a different way, as described below.
TTextPatternIterator is the abstract base class that provides the protocol for text pattern matching. The system provides a set of concrete derived classes that interpret the text pattern in these ways:
- TStandardTextPatternIterator provides language-sensitive pattern matching. This iterator uses a TTableBasedTextOrder object to match characters based on the rules of a particular natural language. By default, this class uses the ordering object specified in the current locale, but you can explicitly specify a different ordering object.
- TExactTextPatternIterator provides language-insensitive pattern matching based on Unicode character sequences. This iterator performs a bit-by-bit comparison, matching patterns only when the Unicode values are equivalent.
- TSpanTextPatternIterator locates the spans of continuous characters that either include or exclude characters in the specified pattern. This iterator treats the pattern as a set of individual characters, each of which can be matched with characters in the text object in no particular order.
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