Overlapping Matcher

overlapping-matcher

Static analysis can synthesize a concrete Cucumber Expression accepted by two definitions, even if no discovered feature currently uses it. Equivalent matchers already covered by duplicate rules are not repeated, and unsupported regular expressions are never reversed into samples.

The rule complements ambiguous-step: ambiguity is demonstrated by a discovered feature step, while overlap is demonstrated from definitions alone. Work shares maxCandidateComparisons with other pair rules and retains at most 10,000 findings. Exceeding a limit and truncating the scan marks analysis incomplete. Scanning definitions for witnesses evaluates no comparison, so a limit equal to the comparisons a corpus needs stays complete while its witness scans fit within four times the limit. The pass is incomplete when an overlap pair exceeds the remaining budget, witness scans exceed four times the limit, more than 10,000 findings would be retained, or suppression lookups exceed their work limit.

Language support

JavaScript/TypeScript	Cucumber-Ruby
Supported.	Supported for Cucumber Expressions and the translated Ruby regex subset. Other regexes are indeterminate: the run is incomplete and they produce no overlap or unused findings.

Cucumber-Ruby support is experimental; see Cucumber-Ruby.

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