I require a means of checking to see if a string has the following exact pattern within it, i.e.:
(P)
Examples where this would be true is:
Test System (P)
I am not sure though how to check for cases when the string that doesn't have '(P)', i.e:
'Test System (GUI for Prof)' - in this case, this would be false but I am using REGEXP_LIKE and it actually returns TRUE.
I only want it to return True when the exact string of '(P)' exists within the search string.
How can I do this in PL/SQL?
Use:
REGEX_LIKE(t.column, '\(P\)')
Regular-Expressions.info is a great resource.
Regular INSTR would work (Oracle 8i+):
WHERE INSTR(t.column, '(P)') > 0 --column contains '(P)'
WHERE INSTR(t.column, '(P)') = 0 --column does NOT contain '(P)'
LIKE works too:
WHERE t.column LIKE '%(P)%' --column contains '(P)'
WHERE t.column NOT LIKE '%(P)%' --column does NOT contain '(P)'
Try like:
WHERE thing like '%(P)%';
I would stick with REGEXP_* functions, as you'll need to practice them anyway, and knowing regular expressions will serve you well.
They're all good answers, except for a typo in Ponies' first answer. :
The typo is that there's a P missing from REGEX_LIKE:
Written: REGEX_LIKE(t.column, '\(P\)')
Correct: REGEXP_LIKE(T.COLUMN, '\(P\)')
The '\' is an escape character that says "don't look for the symbolic meaning of the next character, but look for the literal character itself."
Related
For my database, I have a list of company numbers where some of them start with two letters. I have created a regex which should eliminate these from a query and according to my tests, it should. But when executed, the result still contains the numbers with letters.
Here is my regex, which I've tested on https://www.regexpal.com
([^A-Z+|a-z+].*)
I've tested it against numerous variations such as SC08093, ZC000191 and NI232312 which shouldn't match and don't in the tests, which is fine.
My sql query looks like;
SELECT companyNumber FROM company_data
WHERE companyNumber ~ '([^A-Z+|a-z+].*)' order by companyNumber desc
To summerise, strings like SC08093 should not match as they start with letters.
I've read through the documentation for postgres but I couldn't seem to find anything regarding this. I'm not sure what I'm missing here. Thanks.
The ~ '([^A-Z+|a-z+].*)' does not work because this is a [^A-Z+|a-z+].* regex matching operation that returns true even upon a partial match (regex matching operation does not require full string match, and thus the pattern can match anywhere in the string). [^A-Z+|a-z+].* matches a letter from A to Z, +,|or a letter fromatoz`, and then any amount of any zero or more chars, anywhere inside a string.
You may use
WHERE companyNumber NOT SIMILAR TO '[A-Za-z]{2}%'
See the online demo
Here, NOT SIMILAR TO returns the inverse result of the SIMILAR TO operation. This SIMILAR TO operator accepts patterns that are almost regex patterns, but are also like regular wildcard patterns. NOT SIMILAR TO '[A-Za-z]{2}%' means all records that start with two ASCII letters ([A-Za-z]{2}) and having anything after (%) are NOT returned and all others will be returned. Note that SIMILAR TO requires a full string match, same as LIKE.
Your pattern: [^A-Z+|a-z+].* means "a string where at least some characters are not A-Z" - to extend that to the whole string you would need to use an anchored regex as shown by S-Man (the group defined with (..) isn't really necessary btw)
I would probably use a regex that specifies want the valid pattern is and then use !~ instead.
where company !~ '^[0-9].*$'
^[0-9].*$ means "only consists of numbers" and the !~ means "does not match"
or
where not (company ~ '^[0-9].*$')
Not start with a letter could be done with
WHERE company ~ '^[^A-Za-z].*'
demo: db<>fiddle
The first ^ marks the beginning. The [^A-Za-z] says "no letter" (including small and capital letters).
Edit: Changed [A-z] into the more precise [A-Za-z] (Why is this regex allowing a caret?)
I need to use SQL to find a sequence of characters at a specific position in a string.
Example:
atcgggatgccatg
I need to find 'atg' starting at character 7 or at character 7-9, either way would work. I don't want to find the 'atg' at the end of the string. I know about LIKE but couldn't find how to use it for a specific position.
Thank you
In MS Access, you could write this as:
where col like '???????atg*' or
col like '????????atg*' or
col like '?????????atg*'
However, if you interested in this type of comparison, you might consider using a database that supports regular expressions.
If you have a look at this page you'll find that LIKE is entirely capable of doing what you want. To find something at, for example, a 3 char offset you can use something like this
SELECT * FROM SomeTable WHERE [InterestingField] LIKE '___FOO%'
The '_' (underscore) is a place marker for any char. Having 3 "any char" markers in the pattern, with a trailing '%', means that the above SQL will match anything with FOO starting from the fourth char, and then anything else (including nothing).
To look for something 7 chars in, use 7 underscores.
Let me know ifthis isn't quite clear.
EDIT: I quoted SQL Server stuff, not Access. Swap in '?' where I have '_', use '*' instead of '%', and check out this link instead.
Revised query:
SELECT * FROM SomeTable WHERE [InterestingField] LIKE '???FOO*'
There's a URL field in my Hive DB that is of string type with this specific pattern:
/Cats-g294078-o303631-Maine_Coon_and_Tabby.html
and I would like to extract the two Cat "types" near the end of the string, with the result being something like:
mainecoontabby
Basically, I'd like to only extract - as one lowercase string - the Cat "types" which are always separated by '_ and _', preceded by '-', and followed by '.html'.
Is there a simple way to do this in HQL? I know HQL has limited functionality, otherwise I'd be using regexp or substring or something like that.
Thanks,
Clark
HQL does have a substr function as cited here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+UDF#LanguageManualUDF-StringFunctions
It returns the piece of a string starting at a value until the end (or for a particular length)
I'd also utilize the function locate to determine the location of the '-' and '_' in the URL.
As long as there are always three dashes and three underscores this should be pretty straight forward.
Might need case statements to determine number of dashes and underscores otherwise.
solution here...
LOWER(REGEXP_REPLACE(SUBSTRING(catString, LOCATE('-', catString, 19)+1), '(_to_)|(\.html)|_', ''))
Interestingly, the following did NOT work... JJFord3, any idea why?
LOWER(REGEXP_EXTRACT(SUBSTRING(FL.url, LOCATE('-', FL.url, 19)+1), '[^(_to_)|(\.html)|_]', 0))
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 came across code similar to the following in an Oracle stored procedure:
SELECT * FROM hr.employees WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(FIRST_NAME, '\A'||:iValue||'\Z', 'c');
And I am not sure what the \A and \Z do.
From what I can glean from the Oracle documentation, I think that they simply suppress the meaning of special characters in the iValue parameter. If so, the above must be equivalent to
SELECT * FROM hr.employees WHERE FIRST_NAME=:iValue;
Can anyone confirm this? Empirically this seems to be the case.
I think that in the past they wanted case insensitive searching so the 'c' was an 'i' before. So in this case we do not need to use the REGEXP_LIKE function any more and can replace it with an equals.
\A matches the position at the beginning of the string.
\Z matches the position at the end of the string or before a newline at the end of the string.
\z matches the position at the end of the string.
These are independent of multiline mode, unlike ^ and $.
Example:
foo\Z would match on foo\n, but foo\z would not match on foo\n.
See Oracle reference.
if || is used for string concatenation, then it's not the same as simple string comparison as it would allow you to use regex. (Also I'm not sure how Oracle treats case sensitivity when using =, MySQL ignores case by default when comparing strings.)
\A matches the very start of input.
\Z matches the very end of input.
Check out regular-expressions.info, which is a great regex resource