Oracle REGEXP_LIKE doesn't work as expected - sql

I was testing a regular expression in Oracle SQL and found something I could not understand:
-- NO MATCH
SELECT 1 FROM DUAL WHERE REGEXP_LIKE ('Professor Frank', '(^|\s)Prof[^\s]*(\s|$)');
Above doesn't match, while the following matches:
-- MATCH
SELECT 1 FROM DUAL WHERE REGEXP_LIKE ('Professor Frank', '(^|\s)Prof\S*(\s|$)');
In other regex flavors, It will be like \bProf[^\s]*\b versus \bProf\S*\b and have similar results. Note: Oracle SQL regex does not have \b or word boundary.
Question: Why don't [^\s]* and \S* work the same way in Oracle SQL?
I notice if I remove the (\s|$) at the end, the first regex will match.

In Oracle regular expressions, \s is indeed the escape sequence for a space, but NOT in a matching character set (that is, [.....], or [^....] for excluding one character). In a matching character set, only two characters have a special meaning, - for ranges and ] for closing the set enumeration. They can't be escaped; if needed in the matching set, ] must always be the first character right after the opening [ (it is the ONLY position in which a closing ] stands for itself as a character, and does not denote the end of the matching set), and - must be first or last (best to leave it always to the end of the matching set) - anywhere else it is seen as a range marker. To include (or exclude, if using the [^.....] syntax) a space, just type an actual physical space in the matching set.
Edit: What I said above is not entirely right. There is another special character in a matching set, namely ^. If it is used in the first position, it means "match any character OTHER THAN." In any other position it stands for itself. For example, '[^^]' will match any single character OTHER THAN ^ (the first ^ has special meaning, the second stands in for itself). And, a closing bracket ] stands for itself if it is the second character in brackets, if the first character is ^ (with its SPECIAL meaning). That is, to match any single character OTHER THAN ], we can use the matching pattern '[^]]'.

Related

Regex like telephone number on Hive without prefix (+01)

We have a problem with a regular expression on hive.
We need to exclude the numbers with +37 or 0037 at the beginning of the record (it could be a false result on the regex like) and without letters or space.
We're trying with this one:
regexp_like(tel_number,'^\+37|^0037+[a-zA-ZÀÈÌÒÙ ]')
but it doesn't work.
Edit: we want it to come out from the select as true (correct number) or false.
To exclude numbers which start with +01 0r +001 or +0001 and having only digits without spaces or letters:
... WHERE tel_number NOT rlike '^\\+0{1,3}1\\d+$'
Special characters like + and character classes like \d in Hive should be escaped using double-slash: \\+ and \\d.
The general question is, if you want to describe a malformed telephone number in your regex and exclude everything that matches the pattern or if you want to describe a well-formed telephone number and include everything that matches the pattern.
Which way to go, depends on your scenario. From what I understand of your requirements, adding "not starting with 0037 or +37" as a condition to a well-formed telephone number could be a good approach.
The pattern would be like this:
Your number can start with either + or 00: ^(\+|00)
It cannot be followed by a 37 which in regex can be expressed by the following set of alternatives:
a. It is followed first by a 3 then by anything but 7: 3[0-689]
b. It is followed first by anything but 3 then by any number: [0-24-9]\d
After that there is a sequence of numbers of undefined length (at least one) until the end of the string: \d+$
Putting everything together:
^(\+|00)(3[0-689]|[0-24-9]\d)\d+$
You can play with this regex here and see if this fits your needs: https://regex101.com/r/KK5rjE/3
Note: as leftjoin has pointed out: To use this regex in hive you might need to additionally escape the backslashes \ in the pattern.
You can use
regexp_like(tel_number,'^(?!\\+37|0037)\\+?\\d+$')
See the regex demo. Details:
^ - start of string
(?!\+37|0037) - a negative lookahead that fails the match if there is +37 or 0037 immediately to the right of the current location
\+? - an optional + sign
\d+ - one or more digits
$ - end of string.

new lines are not getting eliminated

I'm trying to replace newline etc kind of values using regexp_replace. But when I open the result in query result window, I can still see the new lines in the text. Even when I copy the result, I can see new line characters. See output for example, I just copied from the result.
Below is my query
select regexp_replace('abc123
/n
CHAR(10)
头疼,'||CHR(10)||'allo','[^[:alpha:][:digit:][ \t]]','') from dual;
/ I just kept for testing characters.
Output:
abc123
/n
CHAR(10)
头疼,
allo
How to remove the new lines from the text?
Expected output:
abc123 /nCHAR(10)头疼,allo
There are two mistakes in your code. One of them causes the issue you noticed.
First, in a bracket expression, in Oracle regular expressions (which follow the POSIX standard), there are no escape sequences. You probably meant \t as escape sequence for tab - within the bracket expression. (Note also that in Oracle regular expressions, there are no escape sequences like \t and \n anyway. If you must preserve tabs, it can be done, but not like that.)
Second, regardless of this, you include two character classes, [:alpha:] and [:digit:], and also [ \t] in the (negated) bracket expression. The last one is not a character class, so the [ as well as the space, the backslash and the letter t are interpreted as literal characters - they stand in for themselves. The closing bracket, on the other hand, has special meaning. The first of your two closing brackets is interpreted as the end of the bracket expression; and the second closing bracket is interpreted as being an additional, literal character that must be matched! Since there is no such literal closing bracket anywhere in the string, nothing is replaced.
To fix both mistakes, replace [ \t] with the [:blank:] character class, which consists exactly of space and tab. (And, note that [:alpha:][:digit:] can be written more compactly as [:alnum:].)

REGEXP_REPLACE explanation

Hi may i know what does the below query means?
REGEXP_REPLACE(number,'[^'' ''-/0-9:-#A-Z''[''-`a-z{-~]', 'xy') ext_number
part 1
In terms of explaining what the function function call is doing:
It is a function call to analyse an input string 'number' with a regex (2nd argument) and replace any parts of the string which match a specific string. As for the name after the parenthesis I am not sure, but the documentation for the function is here
part 2
Sorry to be writing a question within an answer here but I cannot respond in comments yet (not enough rep)
Does this regex work? Unless sql uses different syntax this would appear to be a non-functional regex. There are some red flags, e.g:
The entire regex is wrapped in square parenthesis, indicating a set of characters but seems to predominantly hold an expression
There is a range indicator between a single quote and a character (invalid range: if a dash was required in the match it should be escaped with a '\' (backslash))
One set of square brackets is never closed
After some minor tweaks this regex is valid syntax:
^'' ''\-\/0-9:-#A-Z''[''-a-z{-~]`, but does not match anything I can think of, it is important to know what string is being examined/what the context is for the program in order to identify what the regex might be attempting to do
It seems like it is meant to replaces all ASCII control characters in the column or variable number with xy.
[] encloses a class of characters. Any character in that class matches. [^] negates that, hence all characters match, that are not in the class.
- is a range operator, e.g. a-z means all characters from a to z, like abc...xyz.
It seams like characters enclosed in ' should be escaped (The second ' is to escape the ' in the string itself.) At least this would make some sense. (But for none of the DBMS I found having a regexp_replace() function (Postgres, Oracle, DB2, MariaDB, MySQL), I found something in the docs, that would indicate this escape mechanism. They all use \, but maybe I missed something? Unfortunately you didn't tag which DBMS you're actually using!)
Now if you take an ASCII table you'll see, that the ranges in the expression make up all printable characters (counting space as printable) in groups from space to /, 0 to 9, : to #, etc.. Actually it might have been shorter to express it as '' ''-~, space to ~.
Given the negation, all these don't match. The ones left are from NUL to US and DEL. These match and get replaced by xy one by one.

Oracle regexp_like pattern with POSIX character class

I have username in this pattern
ref_2_34_aaa_dos
ref_2_34_bbb_dos
How can I use regexp_like for this?
SELECT username FROM all_users WHERE regexp_like(username, '^ref_2_34_[:alpha:]_dos$')
does not work. Nor can I use ESCAPE '\' with regexp_like. it would give a syntax error.
You need to put the POSIX character class [:alpha:] into a bracket expression (i.e. [...]) and apply a + quantifier to it:
regexp_like(username, '^ref_2_34_[[:alpha:]]+_dos$')
The + quantifier means there can be 1 or more letters between the last but one and last underscores.
If your string may have no user name at that location (it is empty), and you want to get those entries too, you would need to replace the plus with the * quantifier that matches zero or more occurrences of the quantified subpattern.
Since comments require some more clarifications, here is some bracket expression and POSIX character class reference.
Bracket expressions
Matches any single character in the list within the brackets. The following operators are allowed within the list, but other metacharacters included are treated as literals:
Range operator: -
POSIX character class: [: :]
POSIX collation element: [. .]
POSIX character equivalence class: [= =]
A dash (-) is a literal when it occurs first or last in the list, or as an ending range point in a range expression, as in [#--]. A right bracket (]) is treated as a literal if it occurs first in the list.
POSIX Character Class (can be a part of the bracket expression):
[:class:] - Matches any character belonging to the specified POSIX character class. You can use this operator to search for characters with specific formatting such as uppercase characters, or you can search for special characters such as digits or punctuation characters. The full set of POSIX character classes is supported.
...
The expression [[:upper:]]+ searches for one or more consecutive uppercase characters.
Bracket expressions can be considered a kind of a "container" construct for multiple atoms, that, as a whole regex unit, matches some class of characters you defined. If you need to match a <, or >, or letters, you may combine them into 1 bracket expression [<>[:alpha:]]. To match zero or more of <, > or letters, add a * quantifier after ]: [<>[:alpha:]]*.
Or, to imitate a trailing word boundary, one might use [^_[:alnum:]] (say, in a ($|[^_[:alnum:]]) pattern) that matches any character but a _, digits and letters ([:alnum:] matches alphanumerical symbols).

Regular expression to match specific variations of function

I am trying to construct a regular expression to find the text of the following variations.
NSLocalizedString(#"TEXT")
NSLocalizedStringFromTable(#"TEXT")
NSLocalizedStringWithDefaultValue(#"TEXT")
...
The goal is to extract TEXT. I have been able to construct a regex for each individual function or macro, e.g., (?<=NSLocalizedString)\(#"(.*?)". However, I am looking for a solution that does the job no matter what the name of the function as long as it starts with NSLocalizedString.
I assumed it was as simple as (?<=NSLocalizedString\w+)\(#"(.*?)", but that does't seem to do the trick.
How about this one?
/NSLocalizedString\w*\(#"(.*)"\)/
Explanation:
NSLocalizedString 'NSLocalizedString'
\w+ word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (0 or
more times (matching the most amount
possible))
\( '('
#" '#"'
( group and capture to \1:
.* any character except \n (0 or more times
(matching the most amount possible))
) end of \1
" '"'
\) ')'
The only reason your regex doesn't work is because the regex engine doesn't support variable length lookbehinds. The (?<=NSLocalizedString\w+) is variable length so can't be used.
Firstly it needs to be \w* not \w+, to allow your first example string to match.
If you move the \w* outside the lookbehind (?<=NSLocalizedString)\w* it will work just fine.
Alternatively, since you have to use a capturing group to grab the text value anyway, theres no need for the lookbehind at all. Change the (?<= to a (?: and it becomes a non-capturing group (which can be variable length), and then just grab your text value from group 1.
Your attempt was:
(?<=NSLocalizedString\w+)\(#"(.*?)"
Both of these minor changes should make it work:
(?<=NSLocalizedString)\w*\(#"(.*?)"
(?:NSLocalizedString\w*)\(#"(.*?)"
The following is actually not supported in Objective-C:
The solution that will extract exactly TEXT without using any groups is:
NSLocalizedString\w*\(#"\K[^"]*
It avoids the need to use a negative lookbehind (which can't be used for reasons I explain below) by using the \K modifier, which chops off anything before it from the match.