i was thinking of designs, and i came across this one which led me to question, would this be an gross misuse of a class?
i'm fairly certain that this won't compile, but just pretend it will for now
Code:string operator=(const Regex &r) { return r.return_string; } class Regex { friend string operator=(const Regex &); public: //ONE public function Regex(string character_string, string expression); protected: string return_string; //....a bunch of private funtions } int main() { string to_match = "a2bcd4"; string result = ""; //pretend like there is no need to escape any \'s here string expression = "[a-z][0-9]\L\w+\E\d"; result = Regex(to_match, expression); }