I would like to be able to extract a number from within a string formatted as follows:
"<[1085674730]> hello foo1, how are you doing?"
I'm a novice with regular expressions, I only want to be able to extract a number that is enclosed in the greater/less-than and bracket symbols, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I have to match numeric digits only, but I'm not sure what syntax is used for only searching within these symbols.
UPDATE:
Thank you all for you input, sorry for not being more specific, as I explained to kiamlaluno, I'm using VB.Net as the language for my application. I was wondering why some of the implementations were not working. In fact, the only one that did work was the one described by Matthew Flaschen. But that captures the symbols around the number as well as the number itself. I would like to only capture the number that is encased in the symbols and filter out the symbols themselves.
Use:
<\[(\d+)\]>
This is tested with ECMAScript regex.
It means:
\[ - literal [
( - open capturing group
\d - digit
+ - one or more
) - close capturing group
\] - literal ]
The overall functionality is to capture one or more digits surrounded by the given characters.
Combine Mathews post with lookarounds http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html. This will exclude the prefix and suffix.
(?<=<\[)\d+(?=\]>)
I didn't test this regex but it should be very close to what you need. Double check at the link provided.
Hope this helps!
$subject = "<[1085674730]> hello foo1, how are you doing?";
preg_match('/<\[(\d+)\]>/', $subject, $matches);
$matches[1] will contain the number you are looking for.
Use:
/<\[([[:digit:]]+)\]>/
If your implementation doesn't support the handy [:digit:] syntax, then use this:
/<\[([\d]+)\]>/
And if your implementation doesn't support the handy \d syntax, then use this:
/<\[([0-9]+)\]>/
Related
The IBM i implementation of regex uses apostrophes (instead of e.g. slashes) to delimit a regex string, i.e.:
... where REGEXP_SUBSTR(MYFIELD,'myregex_expression')
If I try to use an apostrophe inside a [group] within the expression, it always errors - presumably thinking I am giving a closing quote. I have tried:
- escaping it: \'
- doubling it: '' (and tripling)
No joy. I cannot find anything relevant in the IBM SQL manual or by google search.
I really need this to, for instance, allow names like O'Leary.
Thanks to Wiktor Stribizew for the answer in his comment.
There are a couple of "gotchas" for anyone who might land on this question with the same problem. The first is that you have to give the (presumably Unicode) hex value rather than the EBCDIC value that you would use, e.g. in ordinary interactive SQL on the IBM i. So in this case it really is \x27 and not \x7D for an apostrophe. Presumably this is because the REGEXP_ ... functions are working through Unicode even for EBCDIC data.
The second thing is that it would seem that the hex value cannot be the last one in the set. So this works:
^[A-Z0-9_\+\x27-]+ ... etc.
But this doesn't
^[A-Z0-9_\+-\x27]+ ... etc.
I don't know how to highlight text within a code sample, so I draw your attention to the fact that the hyphen is last in the first sample and second-to-last in the second sample.
If anyone knows why it has to not be last, I'd be interested to know. [edit: see Wiktor's answer for the reason]
btw, using double quotes as the string delimiter with an apostrophe in the set didn't work in this context.
A single quote can be defined with the \x27 notation:
^[A-Z0-9_+\x27-]+
^^^^
Note that when you use a hyphen in the character class/bracket expression, when used in between some chars it forms a range between those symbols. When you used ^[A-Z0-9_\+-\x27]+ you defined a range between + and ', which is an invalid range as the + comes after ' in the Unicode table.
I have a localized string that looks something like this in English:
"
5 Mile(s)
5,252 Step(s)
"
My app is localized both in left-to-right and right-to-left languages so I don't want to make assumptions either about the ordering of the step(s) or about the formatting of the number (e.g. 5,252 can be 5.252 depending on user locale). So I need to account for possibilities that can include things like
Step(s) 5.252
as well as what's above.
A few other caveats
All I know is that if the Step(s) line is in there, it will be on its own line (hence in my regex I require \n at each end of the string)
No guarantee that the Mile(s) information will be in the string at all, let alone whether it will be before or after Step(s)
Here's my attempt at pattern extraction:
NSString *patternString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"\\n(([0-9,\\.]*)\s*%#|%#\s*([0-9,\\.]*))\\n",
NSLocalizedString(#"Step(s)",nil), NSLocalizedString(#"Step(s)",nil)];
There appear to be two problems with this:
XCode is indicating Unknown escape sequence '\s' for the second \s in the pattern string above
No matches are being found even for strings like the following:
0.2 Mile(s)
1,482 Step(s)
Ideally I would extract the 1,482 out of this string in a way that is localization friendly. How should I modify my regex?
as far as the regex, perhaps this approach might work - it simply matches (with named groups) each couplet of numbers in sequence, with the assumption the first is miles and the second is steps. Decimals in the . or , form are optional:
(?<miles>\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?).*?(?<steps>\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?)
(and i think it should be \\s) - i'm not an ios guy, but if you can use a regex literal it would be way more readable.
regular expression demo
First I'd like to ask - Why is Mile(s) mentioned in the question at all?
And now to my two bits - you could simply use a positive look-ahead:
^(?=.*Step\(s\))[^\d]*(\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?)
It makes sure the expected word is present on the line, and then captures the number on it, allowing for localized, optional, decimal separator and decimals. This way it doesn't matter if the numer is before, or after, the "word".
It doesn't take localization of the "word" into account, but that you seem to have handled by yourself ;)
See it here at regex101.
Your regex is close, although in Obj-C you need to double-escape the \s and (s):
^(([0-9,.]*)\\s*%#|%#\\s*([0-9,.]*))$
In your NSLocalizedString you likely also need to escape the parentheses enclosing (s):
NSString *patternString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"^(([\\d,.]+)\\s%#|%#\\s([\\d,.]+))$",
NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil), NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil)];
If you don't escape (s) then the regex engine is probably going to interpret it as a capture group.
Looking at NSLog you can see what the pattern actually reads like:
NSLog(#"patternString: %#", patternString);
Output:
patternString: ^(([\d,.]+)\sStep\(s\)|Step\(s\)\s([\d,.]+))$
Since you mentioned the Mile(s) part may not be in the string at all I'm assuming it isn't relevant to the regular expression. As I understand from the question, you just need to capture the number of steps and nothing else. On this basis, here's a modified version of your existing regex:
NSString *patternString =
[NSString stringWithFormat:#"^(?:([0-9,.]*)\\s*%#|%#\\s*([0-9,.]*))$",
NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil), NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil)];
Demo:
https://www.regex101.com/r/Q6ff1b/1
This is based on the following tips/modifications:
Use the m (= UREGEX_MULTILINE) flag option when creating the regex to specify that ^ and $ match the start and end of each line. This is more sophisticated than using \n as it will also handle the start and end of the string where this might not be present. See here.
Always use a double backslash (\\) for regex escaping - otherwise NSString will interpret the single backslash to be escaping the next character and convert it before it gets to the regex.
Literal parentheses need to be escaped - e.g. Step\\(s\\) instead of Step(s).
Characters within a character class (i.e. anything within the [] square brackets) don't need to be escaped - so it would be . rather than \\. - the latter.
If you are using (x|y|...) as a choice and don't need it to be a capturing group, use ?: after the first parenthesis to ensure it doesn't get captured - i.e. (?:x|y|...).
I am new to Regular Expressions and any help is highly appreciated.
Pattern like W00000,W00001,W00002,W00004
Must begin with W
Each string before comma must be six characters
String can only be repeated four times
Comma in between
Must not begin or end with comma
I tried below pattern and some others, like (^[W]{1}\d{5}){1,4}'), and none of them work correctly:
Select 'X' from dual Where REGEXP_LIKE ('W12342','(^[W]{1}\d{5})(?<!,)$')
My understanding is that the OP is saying the match should fail if the string begins or ends with a comma, not just that the preceding or trailing commas shouldn't match, so anchors are needed. Also, based on the regex he attempted, I infer that a single group, such as W00000, should match. So, I think the regex should be this, if the characters following the W must always be digits:
^W[:digit:]{5}(,W[:digit:]{5}){0,3}$
Or this, if they can be something other than digits:
^W[^,]{5}(,W[^,]{5}){0,3}$
UPDATE:
The OP posted the following comment:
I am on Oracle 11g and [:digit:] doesn't work. When I replace it with [0-9] it then works fine.
According to the documentation, Oracle 11g conforms to the POSIX regex standard and should be able to use POSIX character classes such as [:digit:]. However, I noticed in the docs that Oracle 11g does support Perl-style backslash character class abbreviations, which I didn't think was the case when I originally wrote this answer. In that case, the following should work:
^W\d{5}(,W\d{5}){0,3}$
Well in that case, you can do this:
(W[^,]{5},){3}W[^,]{5}
If I understood correctly, this should do it!
^W[0-9]{5}(,W[0-9]{5}){0,3}$
One W12345 pattern, maybe followed by one to 3 ,W12345 blocks.
Edit1: Adding ^$ to fail if there is a comma
Edit2: Fix class, since it fails on Oracle 11g
I'm finding it hard to match strings using NSRegularExpression. Generic alpha characters are not a problem with [a-z] but if I need to match a word like 'import' I'm struggling to make it work. I'm sure I have to escape the word in some manner but I can't find any docs around this. A really basic example would be
{{import "hello"}}
where I want to get hold of the string: hello
edit: to clarify - 'hello' could be any string - it's the bit I want returned
This regular expression matches the text between the "-s in your example:
\{\{import "([^"]+)"\}\}
The match will be stored in the first match group.
I'm trying to implement stuff similar to spell check, but I need to get the word that is limited by a space. EX: "HI HOW R U", I need to collect HI, HOW and so on as they type. i.e. After user hits HI and space I need to collect HI and do a spell check.
Check the documentation for NSString Here. You want the message componentsSepeparatedByString:.
I don't know objective-C, but I'm fairly sure it'll have a Regexp library - although it'd be straightforward to code it without one.
Regexp: \b([^\s])*\b
\b = word boundary (whitespace, comma, dot, exclamation-mark, etc.)
\s = whitespace character
[...] = character set
[^...] = negated character set (any character(s) EXCEPT ...)
() = grouping construct
* = zero or more times
So the suggested expression would start matching at any word boundary, then match every subsequent character that is not a whitespace character, then match a word boundary.
Your stated case is so simple you may just want to look for spaces (one char at a time) and get the substring, but RegExp is very widely used across a range of languages and platforms, and so it's fairly easy to find an expression when you need to - and one often does for common stuff like checking if zip codes, phone numbers, email addresses and so on are syntactically correct. So it's worth learning in any case. :)