replace random matches of regexp

[André Malo]

* gry wrote:

> I might want to replace '(max|min|cos|sqrt|ceil' with "public.\1", but
> only with probability 0.7.  I looked and looked for some computed
> thing in re's that I could stick and expression, but could not find
> such(for good reasons, I know).
> Any ideas how to do this?  I would go for simple, even if it's wildly
> inefficient, though elegance is always admired...

You can run a re.sub() with a function as replacement value. This function
then either returns the replacement or the original match based on a
weighted random value.

nd
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