How to split string into parts using Regex - regex

I have a string containing placeholders which I want replace with other strings, but I would also like to split the string whenever I encounter a placeholder.
So, by splitting I mean that
"This {0} is an example {1} with a placeholder"
should become:
parts[0] -> "This"
parts[1] -> "{0}"
parts[2] -> "is an example"
parts[3] -> "{1}"
parts[4] -> "with a placeholder"
and then the next step would be to replace the placeholders (this part is simple):
parts[0] -> "This"
parts[1] -> value[0]
parts[2] -> "is an example"
parts[3] -> value[1]
parts[4] -> "with a placeholder"
I know how to match and replace the placeholders (e.g. ({\d+})), but no clue how to tell regex to "match non placeholders" and "match placeholders" at the same time.
My idea was something like: (?!{\d+})+ | ({\d+}) but it's not working. I am doing this in JavaScript if Regex flavor is important.
If I can also replace the placeholders with a value in one step it would be neat, but I can also do this after I split.

You might write the pattern as:
{\d+}|\S.*?(?=\s*(?:{\d+}|$))
The pattern matches:
{\d+} Match { 1+ digits and }
| Or
\S.*? Match a non whitespace char followed by any character as few as possible
(?= Positive lookahead
\s* Match optional whitespace chars
(?:{\d+}|$) Match either { 1+ digits and } or assert the end of the string
) Close the lookahead
Regex demo
To get an array with those values:
const regex = /{\d+}|\S.*?(?=\s*(?:{\d+}|$))/gm;
const str = `This {0} is an example {1} with a placeholder`;
console.log(str.match(regex))

If you use parenthesis around the separator, matched results are included in the output:
let parts = str.split(/ *({\d+}) */);
See this demo at tio.run - If separator occurs at start/end, just filter out empty matches.
If your goal is just to replace, it can be done in one step using replace and a callback:
str = str.replace(/{(\d+)}/g, (m0, m1) => value[m1]);
Another demo at tio.run - m0 is the full match, m1 holds the capture of the first group.
Used with g (global) flag to return all possible matches in the string (not just the first).

Related

Regex to replace all non numbers but allow a '+' prefix

I want to delete all invalid letters from a string which should represent a phone number. Only a '+' prefix and numbers are allowed.
I tried in Kotlin with
"+1234abc567+".replace("[^+0-9]".toRegex(), "")
It works nearly perfect, but it does not replace the last '+'.
How can I modify the regex to only allow the first '+'?
You could do a regex replacement on the following pattern:
(?<=.)\+|[^0-9+]+
Sample script:
String input = "+1234abc567+";
String output = input.replaceAll("(?<=.)\\+|[^0-9+]+", "");
System.out.println(input); // +1234abc567+
System.out.println(output); // +1234567
Here is an explanation of the regex pattern:
(?<=.)\+ match a literal + which is NOT first (i.e. preceded by >= 1 character)
| OR
[^0-9+]+ match one or more non digit characters, excluding +
You can use
^(\+)|\D+
Replace with the backreference to the first group, $1. See the regex demo.
Details:
^(\+) - a + at the start of string captured into Group 1
| - or
\D+ - one or more non-digit chars.
NOTE: a raw string literal delimited with """ allows the use of a single backslash to form regex escapes, such as \D, \d, etc. Using this type of string literals greatly simplifies regex definitions inside code.
See the Kotlin demo:
val s = "+1234abc567+"
val regex = """^(\+)|\D+""".toRegex()
println(s.replace(regex, "$1"))
// => +1234567

Relevant Regular Expression in scala

I want to keep only the last term of a string separated by dots
Example:
My string is:
abc"val1.val2.val3.val4"zzz
Expected string after i use regex:
abc"val4"zzz
Which means i want the content from left-hand side which was separated with dot (.)
The most relevant I tried was
val json="""abc"val1.val2.val3.val4"zzz"""
val sortie="""(([A-Za-z0-9]*)\.([A-Za-z0-9]*){2,10})\.([A-Za-z0-9]*)""".r.replaceAllIn(json, a=> a.group(3))
the result was:
abc".val4"zzz
Can you tell me if you have different solution for regex please?
Thanks
You may use
val s = """abc"val1.val2.val3.val4"zzz"""
val res = "(\\w+\")[^\"]*\\.([^\"]*\")".r replaceAllIn (s, "$1$2")
println(res)
// => abc"val4"zzz
See the Scala demo
Pattern details:
(\\w+\") - Group 1 capturing 1+ word chars and a "
[^\"]* - 0+ chars other than "
\\. - a dot
([^\"]*\") - Group 2 capturing 0+ chars other than " and then a ".
The $1 is the backreference to the first group and $2 inserts the text inside Group 2.
Maybe without Regex at all:
scala> json.split("\"").map(_.split("\\.").last).mkString("\"")
res4: String = abc"val4"zzz
This assumes you want each "token" (separated by ") to become the last dot-separated inner token.

Swift Regex for extracting words between parenthesis

Hello i wanna extract the text between ().
For example :
(some text) some other text -> some text
(some) some other text -> some
(12345) some other text -> 12345
the maximum length of the string between parenthesis should be 10 characters.
(TooLongStri) -> nothing matched because 11 characters
what i have currently is :
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: "\\(\\w+\\)", options: [])
regex.enumerateMatchesInString(text, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, (text as NSString).length))
{
(result, _, _) in
let match = (text as NSString).substringWithRange(result!.range)
if (match.characters.count <= 10)
{
print(match)
}
}
which works nicely but the matches are :
(some text) some other text -> (some text)
(some) some other text -> (some)
(12345) some other text -> (12345)
and doesn't match <=10 because () are counted also.
How can i change the code above to solve that? I would like also to remove the if (match.characters.count <= 10)by extending the regex to hold the length info.
You can use
"(?<=\\()[^()]{1,10}(?=\\))"
See the regex demo
The pattern:
(?<=\\() - asserts the presence of a ( before the current position and fails the match if there is none
[^()]{1,10} - matches 1 to 10 characters other than ( and ) (replace [^()] with \w if you need to only match alphanumeric / underscore characters)
(?=\\)) - checks if there is a literal ) after the current position, and fail the match if there is none.
If you can adjust your code to get the value at Range 1 (capture group) you can use a simpler regex:
"\\(([^()]{1,10})\\)"
See the regex demo. The value you need is inside Capture group 1.
This will work
\((?=.{0,10}\)).+?\)
Regex Demo
This will also work
\((?=.{0,10}\))([^)]+)\)
Regex Demo
Regex Breakdown
\( #Match the bracket literally
(?=.{0,10}\)) #Lookahead to check there are between 0 to 10 characters till we encounter another )
([^)]+) #Match anything except )
\) #Match ) literally

regular expressions: find every word that appears exactly one time in my document

Trying to learn regular expressions. As a practice, I'm trying to find every word that appears exactly one time in my document -- in linguistics this is a hapax legemenon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon)
So I thought the following expression give me the desired result:
\w{1}
But this doesn't work. The \w returns a character not a whole word. Also it does not appear to be giving me characters that appear only once (it actually returns 25873 matches -- which I assume are all alphanumeric characters). Can someone give me an example of how to find "hapax legemenon" with a regular expression?
If you're trying to do this as a learning exercise, you picked a very hard problem :)
First of all, here is the solution:
\b(\w+)\b(?<!\b\1\b.*\b\1\b)(?!.*\b\1\b)
Now, here is the explanation:
We want to match a word. This is \b\w+\b - a run of one or more (+) word characters (\w), with a 'word break' (\b) on either side. A word break happens between a word character and a non-word character, so this will match between (e.g.) a word character and a space, or at the beginning and the end of the string. We also capture the word into a backreference by using parentheses ((...)). This means we can refer to the match itself later on.
Next, we want to exclude the possibility that this word has already appeared in the string. This is done by using a negative lookbehind - (?<! ... ). A negative lookbehind doesn't match if its contents match the string up to this point. So we want to not match if the word we have matched has already appeared. We do this by using a backreference (\1) to the already captured word. The final match here is \b\1\b.*\b\1\b - two copies of the current match, separated by any amount of string (.*).
Finally, we don't want to match if there is another copy of this word anywhere in the rest of the string. We do this by using negative lookahead - (?! ... ). Negative lookaheads don't match if their contents match at this point in the string. We want to match the current word after any amount of string, so we use (.*\b\1\b).
Here is an example (using C#):
var s = "goat goat leopard bird leopard horse";
foreach (Match m in Regex.Matches(s, #"\b(\w+)\b(?<!\b\1\b.*\b\1\b)(?!.*\b\1\b)"))
Console.WriteLine(m.Value);
Output:
bird
horse
It can be done in a single regex if your regex engine supports infinite repetition inside lookbehind assertions (e. g. .NET):
Regex regexObj = new Regex(
#"( # Match and capture into backreference no. 1:
\b # (from the start of the word)
\p{L}+ # a succession of letters
\b # (to the end of a word).
) # End of capturing group.
(?<= # Now assert that the preceding text contains:
^ # (from the start of the string)
(?: # (Start of non-capturing group)
(?! # Assert that we can't match...
\b\1\b # the word we've just matched.
) # (End of lookahead assertion)
. # Then match any character.
)* # Repeat until...
\1 # we reach the word we've just matched.
) # End of lookbehind assertion.
# We now know that we have just matched the first instance of that word.
(?= # Now look ahead to assert that we can match the following:
(?: # (Start of non-capturing group)
(?! # Assert that we can't match again...
\b\1\b # the word we've just matched.
) # (End of lookahead assertion)
. # Then match any character.
)* # Repeat until...
$ # the end of the string.
) # End of lookahead assertion.",
RegexOptions.Singleline | RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace);
Match matchResults = regexObj.Match(subjectString);
while (matchResults.Success) {
// matched text: matchResults.Value
// match start: matchResults.Index
// match length: matchResults.Length
matchResults = matchResults.NextMatch();
}
If you are trying to match an English word, the best form is:
[a-zA-Z]+
The problem with \w is that it also includes _ and numeric digits 0-9.
If you need to include other characters, you can append them after the Z but before the ]. Or, you might need to normalize the input text first.
Now, if you want a count of all words, or just to see words that don't appear more than once, you can't do that with a single regex. You'll need to invest some time in programming more complex logic. It may very well need to be backed by a database or some sort of memory structure to keep track of the count. After you parse and count the whole text, you can search for words that have a count of 1.
(\w+){1} will match each word.
After that you could always perfrom the count on the matches....
Higher level solution:
Create an array of your matches:
preg_match_all("/([a-zA-Z]+)/", $text, $matches, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
Let PHP count your array elements:
$tmp_array = array_count_values($matches[1]);
Iterate over the tmp array and check the word count:
foreach ($tmp_array as $word => $count) {
echo $word . ' ' . $count;
}
Low level but does what you want:
Pass your text in an array using split:
$array = split('\s+', $text);
Iterate over that array:
foreach ($array as $word) { ... }
Check each word if it is a word:
if (!preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z]/', $word) continue;
Add the word to a temporary array as key:
if (!$tmp_array[$word]) $tmp_array[$word] = 0;
$tmp_array[$word]++;
After the loop. Iterate over the tmp array and check the word count:
foreach ($tmp_array as $word => $count) {
echo $word . ' ' . $count;
}

Regular expression for duplicate words

I'm a regular expression newbie and I can't quite figure out how to write a single regular expression that would "match" any duplicate consecutive words such as:
Paris in the the spring.
Not that that is related.
Why are you laughing? Are my my regular expressions THAT bad??
Is there a single regular expression that will match ALL of the bold strings above?
Try this regular expression:
\b(\w+)\s+\1\b
Here \b is a word boundary and \1 references the captured match of the first group.
Regex101 example here
I believe this regex handles more situations:
/(\b\S+\b)\s+\b\1\b/
A good selection of test strings can be found here: http://callumacrae.github.com/regex-tuesday/challenge1.html
The below expression should work correctly to find any number of duplicated words. The matching can be case insensitive.
String regex = "\\b(\\w+)(\\s+\\1\\b)+";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
Matcher m = p.matcher(input);
// Check for subsequences of input that match the compiled pattern
while (m.find()) {
input = input.replaceAll(m.group(0), m.group(1));
}
Sample Input : Goodbye goodbye GooDbYe
Sample Output : Goodbye
Explanation:
The regex expression:
\b : Start of a word boundary
\w+ : Any number of word characters
(\s+\1\b)* : Any number of space followed by word which matches the previous word and ends the word boundary. Whole thing wrapped in * helps to find more than one repetitions.
Grouping :
m.group(0) : Shall contain the matched group in above case Goodbye goodbye GooDbYe
m.group(1) : Shall contain the first word of the matched pattern in above case Goodbye
Replace method shall replace all consecutive matched words with the first instance of the word.
Try this with below RE
\b start of word word boundary
\W+ any word character
\1 same word matched already
\b end of word
()* Repeating again
public static void main(String[] args) {
String regex = "\\b(\\w+)(\\b\\W+\\b\\1\\b)*";// "/* Write a RegEx matching repeated words here. */";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE/* Insert the correct Pattern flag here.*/);
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
int numSentences = Integer.parseInt(in.nextLine());
while (numSentences-- > 0) {
String input = in.nextLine();
Matcher m = p.matcher(input);
// Check for subsequences of input that match the compiled pattern
while (m.find()) {
input = input.replaceAll(m.group(0),m.group(1));
}
// Prints the modified sentence.
System.out.println(input);
}
in.close();
}
Regex to Strip 2+ duplicate words (consecutive/non-consecutive words)
Try this regex that can catch 2 or more duplicate words and only leave behind one single word. And the duplicate words need not even be consecutive.
/\b(\w+)\b(?=.*?\b\1\b)/ig
Here, \b is used for Word Boundary, ?= is used for positive lookahead, and \1 is used for back-referencing.
Example
Source
The widely-used PCRE library can handle such situations (you won't achieve the the same with POSIX-compliant regex engines, though):
(\b\w+\b)\W+\1
Here is one that catches multiple words multiple times:
(\b\w+\b)(\s+\1)+
No. That is an irregular grammar. There may be engine-/language-specific regular expressions that you can use, but there is no universal regular expression that can do that.
This is the regex I use to remove duplicate phrases in my twitch bot:
(\S+\s*)\1{2,}
(\S+\s*) looks for any string of characters that isn't whitespace, followed whitespace.
\1{2,} then looks for more than 2 instances of that phrase in the string to match. If there are 3 phrases that are identical, it matches.
Since some developers are coming to this page in search of a solution which not only eliminates duplicate consecutive non-whitespace substrings, but triplicates and beyond, I'll show the adapted pattern.
Pattern: /(\b\S+)(?:\s+\1\b)+/ (Pattern Demo)
Replace: $1 (replaces the fullstring match with capture group #1)
This pattern greedily matches a "whole" non-whitespace substring, then requires one or more copies of the matched substring which may be delimited by one or more whitespace characters (space, tab, newline, etc).
Specifically:
\b (word boundary) characters are vital to ensure partial words are not matched.
The second parenthetical is a non-capturing group, because this variable width substring does not need to be captured -- only matched/absorbed.
the + (one or more quantifier) on the non-capturing group is more appropriate than * because * will "bother" the regex engine to capture and replace singleton occurrences -- this is wasteful pattern design.
*note if you are dealing with sentences or input strings with punctuation, then the pattern will need to be further refined.
The example in Javascript: The Good Parts can be adapted to do this:
var doubled_words = /([A-Za-z\u00C0-\u1FFF\u2800-\uFFFD]+)\s+\1(?:\s|$)/gi;
\b uses \w for word boundaries, where \w is equivalent to [0-9A-Z_a-z]. If you don't mind that limitation, the accepted answer is fine.
This expression (inspired from Mike, above) seems to catch all duplicates, triplicates, etc, including the ones at the end of the string, which most of the others don't:
/(^|\s+)(\S+)(($|\s+)\2)+/g, "$1$2")
I know the question asked to match duplicates only, but a triplicate is just 2 duplicates next to each other :)
First, I put (^|\s+) to make sure it starts with a full word, otherwise "child's steak" would go to "child'steak" (the "s"'s would match). Then, it matches all full words ((\b\S+\b)), followed by an end of string ($) or a number of spaces (\s+), the whole repeated more than once.
I tried it like this and it worked well:
var s = "here here here here is ahi-ahi ahi-ahi ahi-ahi joe's joe's joe's joe's joe's the result result result";
print( s.replace( /(\b\S+\b)(($|\s+)\1)+/g, "$1"))
--> here is ahi-ahi joe's the result
Try this regular expression it fits for all repeated words cases:
\b(\w+)\s+\1(?:\s+\1)*\b
I think another solution would be to use named capture groups and backreferences like this:
.* (?<mytoken>\w+)\s+\k<mytoken> .*/
OR
.*(?<mytoken>\w{3,}).+\k<mytoken>.*/
Kotlin:
val regex = Regex(""".* (?<myToken>\w+)\s+\k<myToken> .*""")
val input = "This is a test test data"
val result = regex.find(input)
println(result!!.groups["myToken"]!!.value)
Java:
var pattern = Pattern.compile(".* (?<myToken>\\w+)\\s+\\k<myToken> .*");
var matcher = pattern.matcher("This is a test test data");
var isFound = matcher.find();
var result = matcher.group("myToken");
System.out.println(result);
JavaScript:
const regex = /.* (?<myToken>\w+)\s+\k<myToken> .*/;
const input = "This is a test test data";
const result = regex.exec(input);
console.log(result.groups.myToken);
// OR
const regex = /.* (?<myToken>\w+)\s+\k<myToken> .*/g;
const input = "This is a test test data";
const result = [...input.matchAll(regex)];
console.log(result[0].groups.myToken);
All the above detect the test as the duplicate word.
Tested with Kotlin 1.7.0-Beta, Java 11, Chrome and Firefox 100.
You can use this pattern:
\b(\w+)(?:\W+\1\b)+
This pattern can be used to match all duplicated word groups in sentences. :)
Here is a sample util function written in java 17, which replaces all duplications with the first occurrence:
public String removeDuplicates(String input) {
var regex = "\\b(\\w+)(?:\\W+\\1\\b)+";
var pattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE);
var matcher = pattern.matcher(input);
while (matcher.find()) {
input = input.replaceAll(matcher.group(), matcher.group(1));
}
return input;
}
As far as I can see, none of these would match:
London in the
the winter (with the winter on a new line )
Although matching duplicates on the same line is fairly straightforward,
I haven't been able to come up with a solution for the situation in which they
stretch over two lines. ( with Perl )
To find duplicate words that have no leading or trailing non whitespace character(s) other than a word character(s), you can use whitespace boundaries on the left and on the right making use of lookarounds.
The pattern will have a match in:
Paris in the the spring.
Not that that is related.
The pattern will not have a match in:
This is $word word
(?<!\S)(\w+)\s+\1(?!\S)
Explanation
(?<!\S) Negative lookbehind, assert not a non whitespace char to the left of the current location
(\w+) Capture group 1, match 1 or more word characters
\s+ Match 1 or more whitespace characters (note that this can also match a newline)
\1 Backreference to match the same as in group 1
(?!\S) Negative lookahead, assert not a non whitespace char to the right of the current location
See a regex101 demo.
To find 2 or more duplicate words:
(?<!\S)(\w+)(?:\s+\1)+(?!\S)
This part of the pattern (?:\s+\1)+ uses a non capture group to repeat 1 or more times matching 1 or more whitespace characters followed by the backreference to match the same as in group 1.
See a regex101 demo.
Alternatives without using lookarounds
You could also make use of a leading and trailing alternation matching either a whitespace char or assert the start/end of the string.
Then use a capture group 1 for the value that you want to get, and use a second capture group with a backreference \2 to match the repeated word.
Matching 2 duplicate words:
(?:\s|^)((\w+)\s+\2)(?:\s|$)
See a regex101 demo.
Matching 2 or more duplicate words:
(?:\s|^)((\w+)(?:\s+\2)+)(?:\s|$)
See a regex101 demo.
Use this in case you want case-insensitive checking for duplicate words.
(?i)\\b(\\w+)\\s+\\1\\b