Btukfyl

I have the following macro definition:

lethlORIGhl

ExplSyntaxOn

tl_new:N l_jdhao_hlx_tl

RenewDocumentCommandhl{m}{%

  tl_set:Nnl_jdhao_hlx_tl{#1}%

  tl_replace_all:Nnnl_jdhao_hlx_tl{ }{~}%

  tl_replace_all:Nnnl_jdhao_hlx_tl{-/-}{mbox{-/-}}%

  tl_replace_all:Nnnl_jdhao_hlx_tl{,}{,{-}}% allow line breaking at a comma

  exp_args:NVhlORIGl_jdhao_hlx_tl}%

ExplSyntaxOff

The above does simple replacement, but I don't think that I can do some conditional replacement. For example, I'd like to be able to replace a hyphen that is preceeded and followed by an alphanumeric to be the same, except that the hyphen is replaced by -/ (e.g., alpha-baker would be be changed to alpha-/baker). At the same time where there is a hyphen that either has spaces or non-alphanumeric character will be left alone. Is this possible? What I'm looking to do is have a hyphen that will not cause hyphenation. I'm think that I can use regex_replace_all instead of tl-replace_all. Does this even make sense, or is there a better way?

A single regex replacing the case you explicitly mentioned in your question (alphanumeric followed by hyphen followed by alphanumeric replaced with the same alphanumeric characters and a -/ in between).

I precompiled the regex with regex_const:Nn, this should save some time if the regex is to be used several times. The code doesn't produce any printed output, only some console ouput:

documentclass{article}



usepackage{expl3}

usepackage{xparse}

ExplSyntaxOn

regex_const:Nn c_jonbelanger_regex { ([A-Za-zd])-([A-Za-zd]) }

tl_new:N l_jonbelanger_tl

NewDocumentCommand hyphenthingy { m }

  {

    tl_set:Nn l_jonbelanger_tl { #1 }

    regex_replace_all:NnN c_jonbelanger_regex { 1c{-}/2 } l_jonbelanger_tl

    tl_show_analysis:N l_jonbelanger_tl

  }

ExplSyntaxOff



begin{document}

hyphenthingy{alpha-baker}

end{document}

The following is printed to the console:

The token list l_jonbelanger_tl contains the tokens:

>  a (the letter a)

>  l (the letter l)

>  p (the letter p)

>  h (the letter h)

>  a (the letter a)

>  - (control sequence=macro:->x@protect -protect -  )

>  / (the character /)

>  b (the letter b)

>  a (the letter a)

>  k (the letter k)

>  e (the letter e)

>  r (the letter r).