#ifndef MANTID_KERNEL_RANGESTRINGPARSER_H_
#define MANTID_KERNEL_RANGESTRINGPARSER_H_

//----------------------------------------------------------------------
// Includes
//----------------------------------------------------------------------

#include "MantidKernel/DllConfig.h"
#include <string>                    
#include <vector>                    

namespace Mantid {
namespace Kernel {

/** This class parses a given string into  vector of vectors of numbers.
  For example : 60,61+62,63-66,67:70,71-75:2  This gives a vector containing 8
  vectors
  as Vec[8] and Vec[0] is a vector containing 1 element 60
  Vec[1] is a vector containing elements 61,62 Vec[2] is a vector containing
  elements 63,64,65,66,
  Vec[3] is a vector containing element 67,Vec[4] is a vector containing element
  68,
  Vec[5] is a vector containing element 69,Vec[6] is a vector containing element
  70 ,
  vec[7] is a vector containing element 71,73,75

  @author Sofia Antony, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
  @date 27/01/2011

  Copyright &copy; 2010-2011 ISIS Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, NScD Oak Ridge
  National Laboratory & European Spallation Source

  This file is part of Mantid.

  Mantid is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  Mantid is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
  GNU General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

  File change history is stored at: <https://github.com/mantidproject/mantid>.
  Code Documentation is available at: <http://doxygen.mantidproject.org>
*/

class MANTID_KERNEL_DLL UserStringParser {
public:
  /// parses a given string  into a vector of  vector of numbers
  std::vector<std::vector<unsigned int>> parse(const std::string &userString);

private:
  /// separate a given string to a vector of comma separated strings
  std::vector<std::string> separateComma(const std::string &);
  /// separates a given string to vector of vector of numbers using colon as the
  /// delimeter
  std::vector<std::vector<unsigned int>>
  separateColon(const std::string &input);
  /// separate delimiter string from input string and return a vector of numbers
  /// created from the separated string
  std::vector<unsigned int> separateDelimiters(const std::string &input,
                                               const std::string &delimiters);

  /// converts a string to int.
  unsigned int toUInt(const std::string &input);
  /// This method checks the input string contains the character ch
  bool Contains(const std::string &input, char ch);

  /// This method removes the separator string from the input string and
  /// converts the tokens to unisgned int
  void Tokenize(const std::string &input, const std::string &delimiter,
                unsigned int &start, unsigned int &end, unsigned int &step);

  /// convert the string into numbers
  void parse(const std::string &userString,
             std::vector<std::vector<unsigned int>> &numbers);
  /// validates the input string
  bool isValid(const std::string &input, std::vector<std::string> &tokens);
  /// converts the parsed tokens to numbers
  void convertToNumbers(const std::string &input,
                        const std::vector<std::string> &tokens,
                        unsigned int &start, unsigned int &end,
                        unsigned int &step);
  // returns true if the separator before the step string is valid
  bool isValidStepSeparator(const std::string &input,
                            const std::vector<std::string> &tokens);
};
}
}
#endif