Do not select if additional character is included - regex

Suppose I have the following numbers:
3,000mt
300mt
44,000m
320m
And I want 44,000m and 320m to be selected.
What regex should I use to only select the numbers (comma separated) that have "m" in the end and not the ones that have "mt"?
This is what I have tried:
\d+[,]?\d+m.
I have no idea how to negate mt though.

You are very close to the solution and only missed the possibility to check for a word boundary (represented by regex character \b). So instead of using any character . at the end of your regular expression, you will probably only look if the string is ended by a word boundary (e.g. spaces or newlines or nothing more):
\d+(,\d+)?m\b
where
\d+ looks for any digits (at least one)
(,\d+)? looks for a comma followed by one digit or more (it's grouped by using parentheses and the whole group is completely optional using the ? sign)
m\b as explained above looks for a literal m at the end of a word
With this regex you can also match strings with one digit only followed by m like 9m or similar. This is a slight change in comparison to your regex (grouping comma followed by digits).
I proved the regex via Python and also added some more edge cases:
>>> import re
>>> text = "3,000mt 300mt 44,000m 1m 1mt 1,3mt 320m"
>>> re.findall(r"\d+(?:,\d+)?m\b", text) # ?: is python specific for findall method
['44,000m', '1m', '320m']

how about a unix solution like below
> echo "3,000mt 300mt 44,000m 320m" | tr ' ' '\n' | awk -F" " ' $0~/m$/ { print } '
44,000m
320m
>

Related

Regular expression in R: gsub pattern

I'm learning R's regular expression and I am having trouble understanding this
gsub example:
gsub("([.|()\\^{}+$*?]|\\[|\\])", "\\\\\\1", x)
So far I think I get:
if x is alphanumeric it doesn't match so all nothing modified
if x contains a . or | or ( or { or } or + or $ or ? it adds \\ in front of it
I can't explain:
> gsub("([.|()\\^{}+$*?]|\\[|\\])", "\\\\\\1", '10\1')
[1] "10\001"
or
> gsub("([.|()\\^{}+$*?]|\\[|\\])", "\\\\\\1", '10/1')
[1] "10/1"
I am also confused why the replacement "\\\\\\1" add only two brackets.
I'm suppose to figure out what this function does and I think it's suppose to escape certain special characters ?
The entire pattern is wrapped in parentheses which allows back-references. This part:
[.|()\\^{}+$*?]
... is a "character class" so it matches any one of the characters inside teh square-brackets, and as you say it is changing the way the pattern syntax will interpret what would otherwise be meta-characters within the pattern definition.
The next part is a "pipe" character which is the regex-OR followed by an escaped open-square-bracket, another "OR"-pipe, and then an escaped close-square-bracket. Since both R and regex use backslashes as escapes, you need to double them to get an R+regex-escape in patterns ... but not in replacement strings. The close-square-bracket can only be entered in a character class if it is placed first in the string, sot that entire pattern could have been more compactly formed with:
"[][.|()\\^{}+$*?]" # without the "|\\[|\\])"
In replacement strings the form "\\n" refers to whatever matched the n-th parenthetical portion of the 'pattern', in this case '\1' is the second portion of the replacement. The first position is "\" which forms an escape and the second "\" forms the backslash. Now get ready to the even weirder part ... how many characters are in that result?
> nchar( gsub("([.|()\\^{}+$*?]|\\[|\\])", "\\\\1", '10\1') )
[1] 3
And then of course none of the items in the match is equal to '\1". Somebody writing whatever tutorial you have before you (which I do not think is the gsub help page) has a weird sense of humor. Here are a couple of functions that may be useful if you need to create characters that would otherwise be intercepted by the system readline function:
> intToUtf8(1)
[1] "\001"
> ?intToUtf8
> 0x0
[1] 0
> intToUtf8(0)
[1] ""
> utf8ToInt("")
integer(0)
And do look at ?Quotes where a lot of useful information can be found (under what I would consider a rather unlikely title) about how R handles octal, hexadecimal and other numbers and special characters.
The first regex broken down is this
( # (1 start)
[.|()\^{}+$*?]
| \[
| \]
) # (1 end)
It captures any what's in the 'class' or '[' or ']' then it looks like it replaces it with \\\1 which is an escape plus whatever was in capture 1.
So, basically it just escapes a single occurrence of one of those chars.
The regex could be better written as ([.|()^{}\[\]+$*?]) or within a
string as "([.|()^{}\\[\\]+$*?])"
Edit (promoting a comment) -
The regex won't match string 10\1 so there should be no replacement. There must be an interpolation (language) on the print out. Looks like its converting it to octal \001. - Since it cant show binary 1 it shows its octal equivalent.

negative look ahead on whole number but preceded by a character(perl)

I have text like this;
2500.00 $120.00 4500 12.00 $23.00 50.0989
Iv written a regex;
/(?!$)\d+\.\d{2}/g
I want it to only match 2500.00, 12.00 nothing else.
the requirement is that it needs to add the '$' sign onto numeric values that have exactly two digits after the decimal point. with the current regex it ads extra '$' to the ones that already have a '$' sign. its longer but im just saying it briefly. I know i can use regex to remove the '$' then use another regex to add '$' to all the desired numbers.
any help would be appreciated thanks!
To answer your question, you need to look before the pos where the first digit is.
(?<!\$)
But that's not going to work as it will match 23.45 of $123.45 to change it into $1$23.45, and it will match 123.45 of 123.456 to change it into $123.456. You want to make sure there's no digits before or after what you match.
s/(?<![\$\d])(\d+\.\d{2})(?!\d)/\$$1/g;
Or the quicker
s/(?<![\$\d])(?=\d+\.\d{2}(?!\d))/\$/g;
This is tricky only because you are trying to include too many functionalities in your single regex. If you manipulate the string first to isolate each number, this becomes trivial, as this one-liner demonstrates:
$ perl -F"(\s+)" -lane's/^(?=\d+\.\d{2}$)/\$/ for #F; print #F;'
2500.00 $120.00 4500 12.00 $23.00 50.0989
$2500.00 $120.00 4500 $12.00 $23.00 50.0989
The full code for this would be something like:
while (<>) { # or whatever file handle or input you read from
my #line = split /(\s+)/;
s/^(?=\d+\.\d{2}$)/\$/ for #line;
print #line; # or select your desired means of output
# my $out = join "", #line; # as string
}
Note that this split is non-destructive because we use parentheses to capture our delimiters. So for our sample input, the resulting list looks like this when printed with Data::Dumper:
$VAR1 = [
'2500.00',
' ',
'$120.00',
' ',
'4500',
' ',
'12.00',
' ',
'$23.00',
' ',
'50.0989'
];
Our regex here is simply anchored in both ends, and allowed to contain numbers, followed by a period . and two numbers, and nothing else. Because we use a look-ahead assertion, it will insert the dollar sign at the beginning, and keep everything else. Because of the strictness of our regex, we do not need to worry about checking for any other characters, and because we split on whitespace, we do not need to check for any such.
You can use this pattern:
s/(?<!\S)\d+\.\d{2}(?!\S)/\$${^MATCH}/gp
or
s/(?<!\S)(?=\d+\.\d{2}(?!\S))/\$/g
I think it is the shorter way.
(?<!\S) not preceded by a character that is not a white character
(?!\S) not followed by a character that is not a white character
The main interest of these double negations is that you include automaticaly the begining and the end of the string cases.

Regular expression help - comma delimited string

I don't write many regular expressions so I'm going to need some help on the one.
I need a regular expression that can validate that a string is an alphanumeric comma delimited string.
Examples:
123, 4A67, GGG, 767 would be valid.
12333, 78787&*, GH778 would be invalid
fghkjhfdg8797< would be invalid
This is what I have so far, but isn't quite right: ^(?=.*[a-zA-Z0-9][,]).*$
Any suggestions?
Sounds like you need an expression like this:
^[0-9a-zA-Z]+(,[0-9a-zA-Z]+)*$
Posix allows for the more self-descriptive version:
^[[:alnum:]]+(,[[:alnum:]]+)*$
^[[:alnum:]]+([[:space:]]*,[[:space:]]*[[:alnum:]]+)*$ // allow whitespace
If you're willing to admit underscores, too, search for entire words (\w+):
^\w+(,\w+)*$
^\w+(\s*,\s*\w+)*$ // allow whitespaces around the comma
Try this pattern: ^([a-zA-Z0-9]+,?\s*)+$
I tested it with your cases, as well as just a single number "123". I don't know if you will always have a comma or not.
The [a-zA-Z0-9]+ means match 1 or more of these symbols
The ,? means match 0 or 1 commas (basically, the comma is optional)
The \s* handles 1 or more spaces after the comma
and finally the outer + says match 1 or more of the pattern.
This will also match
123 123 abc (no commas) which might be a problem
This will also match 123, (ends with a comma) which might be a problem.
Try the following expression:
/^([a-z0-9\s]+,)*([a-z0-9\s]+){1}$/i
This will work for:
test
test, test
test123,Test 123,test
I would strongly suggest trimming the whitespaces at the beginning and end of each item in the comma-separated list.
You seem to be lacking repetition. How about:
^(?:[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+,)*[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+$
I'm not sure how you'd express that in VB.Net, but in Python:
>>> import re
>>> x [ "123, $a67, GGG, 767", "12333, 78787&*, GH778" ]
>>> r = '^(?:[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+,)*[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+$'
>>> for s in x:
... print re.match( r, s )
...
<_sre.SRE_Match object at 0xb75c8218>
None
>>>>
You can use shortcuts instead of listing the [a-zA-Z0-9 ] part, but this is probably easier to understand.
Analyzing the highlights:
[a-zA-Z0-9 ]+ : capture one or more (but not zero) of the listed ranges, and space.
(?:[...]+,)* : In non-capturing parenthesis, match one or more of the characters, plus a comma at the end. Match such sequences zero or more times. Capturing zero times allows for no comma.
[...]+ : capture at least one of these. This does not include a comma. This is to ensure that it does not accept a trailing comma. If a trailing comma is acceptable, then the expression is easier: ^[a-zA-Z0-9 ,]+
Yes, when you want to catch comma separated things where a comma at the end is not legal, and the things match to $LONGSTUFF, you have to repeat $LONGSTUFF:
$LONGSTUFF(,$LONGSTUFF)*
If $LONGSTUFF is really long and contains comma repeated items itself etc., it might be a good idea to not build the regexp by hand and instead rely on a computer for doing that for you, even if it's just through string concatenation. For example, I just wanted to build a regular expression to validate the CPUID parameter of a XEN configuration file, of the ['1:a=b,c=d','2:e=f,g=h'] type. I... believe this mostly fits the bill: (whitespace notwithstanding!)
xend_fudge_item_re = r"""
e[a-d]x= #register of the call return value to fudge
(
0x[0-9A-F]+ | #either hardcode the reply
[10xks]{32} #or edit the bitfield directly
)
"""
xend_string_item_re = r"""
(0x)?[0-9A-F]+: #leafnum (the contents of EAX before the call)
%s #one fudge
(,%s)* #repeated multiple times
""" % (xend_fudge_item_re, xend_fudge_item_re)
xend_syntax = re.compile(r"""
\[ #a list of
'%s' #string elements
(,'%s')* #repeated multiple times
\]
$ #and nothing else
""" % (xend_string_item_re, xend_string_item_re), re.VERBOSE | re.MULTILINE)
Try ^(?!,)((, *)?([a-zA-Z0-9])\b)*$
Step by step description:
Don't match a beginning comma (good for the upcoming "loop").
Match optional comma and spaces.
Match characters you like.
The match of a word boundary make sure that a comma is necessary if more arguments are stacked in string.
Please use - ^((([a-zA-Z0-9\s]){1,45},)+([a-zA-Z0-9\s]){1,45})$
Here, I have set max word size to 45, as longest word in english is 45 characters, can be changed as per requirement

Regex for quoted string with escaping quotes

How do I get the substring " It's big \"problem " using a regular expression?
s = ' function(){ return " It\'s big \"problem "; }';
/"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*"/
Works in The Regex Coach and PCRE Workbench.
Example of test in JavaScript:
var s = ' function(){ return " Is big \\"problem\\", \\no? "; }';
var m = s.match(/"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*"/);
if (m != null)
alert(m);
This one comes from nanorc.sample available in many linux distros. It is used for syntax highlighting of C style strings
\"(\\.|[^\"])*\"
As provided by ePharaoh, the answer is
/"([^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"/
To have the above apply to either single quoted or double quoted strings, use
/"([^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"|\'([^\'\\]*(\\.[^\'\\]*)*)\'/
Most of the solutions provided here use alternative repetition paths i.e. (A|B)*.
You may encounter stack overflows on large inputs since some pattern compiler implements this using recursion.
Java for instance: http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6337993
Something like this:
"(?:[^"\\]*(?:\\.)?)*", or the one provided by Guy Bedford will reduce the amount of parsing steps avoiding most stack overflows.
/(["\']).*?(?<!\\)(\\\\)*\1/is
should work with any quoted string
"(?:\\"|.)*?"
Alternating the \" and the . passes over escaped quotes while the lazy quantifier *? ensures that you don't go past the end of the quoted string. Works with .NET Framework RE classes
/"(?:[^"\\]++|\\.)*+"/
Taken straight from man perlre on a Linux system with Perl 5.22.0 installed.
As an optimization, this regex uses the 'posessive' form of both + and * to prevent backtracking, for it is known beforehand that a string without a closing quote wouldn't match in any case.
This one works perfect on PCRE and does not fall with StackOverflow.
"(.*?[^\\])??((\\\\)+)?+"
Explanation:
Every quoted string starts with Char: " ;
It may contain any number of any characters: .*? {Lazy match}; ending with non escape character [^\\];
Statement (2) is Lazy(!) optional because string can be empty(""). So: (.*?[^\\])??
Finally, every quoted string ends with Char("), but it can be preceded with even number of escape sign pairs (\\\\)+; and it is Greedy(!) optional: ((\\\\)+)?+ {Greedy matching}, bacause string can be empty or without ending pairs!
An option that has not been touched on before is:
Reverse the string.
Perform the matching on the reversed string.
Re-reverse the matched strings.
This has the added bonus of being able to correctly match escaped open tags.
Lets say you had the following string; String \"this "should" NOT match\" and "this \"should\" match"
Here, \"this "should" NOT match\" should not be matched and "should" should be.
On top of that this \"should\" match should be matched and \"should\" should not.
First an example.
// The input string.
const myString = 'String \\"this "should" NOT match\\" and "this \\"should\\" match"';
// The RegExp.
const regExp = new RegExp(
// Match close
'([\'"])(?!(?:[\\\\]{2})*[\\\\](?![\\\\]))' +
'((?:' +
// Match escaped close quote
'(?:\\1(?=(?:[\\\\]{2})*[\\\\](?![\\\\])))|' +
// Match everything thats not the close quote
'(?:(?!\\1).)' +
'){0,})' +
// Match open
'(\\1)(?!(?:[\\\\]{2})*[\\\\](?![\\\\]))',
'g'
);
// Reverse the matched strings.
matches = myString
// Reverse the string.
.split('').reverse().join('')
// '"hctam "\dluohs"\ siht" dna "\hctam TON "dluohs" siht"\ gnirtS'
// Match the quoted
.match(regExp)
// ['"hctam "\dluohs"\ siht"', '"dluohs"']
// Reverse the matches
.map(x => x.split('').reverse().join(''))
// ['"this \"should\" match"', '"should"']
// Re order the matches
.reverse();
// ['"should"', '"this \"should\" match"']
Okay, now to explain the RegExp.
This is the regexp can be easily broken into three pieces. As follows:
# Part 1
(['"]) # Match a closing quotation mark " or '
(?! # As long as it's not followed by
(?:[\\]{2})* # A pair of escape characters
[\\] # and a single escape
(?![\\]) # As long as that's not followed by an escape
)
# Part 2
((?: # Match inside the quotes
(?: # Match option 1:
\1 # Match the closing quote
(?= # As long as it's followed by
(?:\\\\)* # A pair of escape characters
\\ #
(?![\\]) # As long as that's not followed by an escape
) # and a single escape
)| # OR
(?: # Match option 2:
(?!\1). # Any character that isn't the closing quote
)
)*) # Match the group 0 or more times
# Part 3
(\1) # Match an open quotation mark that is the same as the closing one
(?! # As long as it's not followed by
(?:[\\]{2})* # A pair of escape characters
[\\] # and a single escape
(?![\\]) # As long as that's not followed by an escape
)
This is probably a lot clearer in image form: generated using Jex's Regulex
Image on github (JavaScript Regular Expression Visualizer.)
Sorry, I don't have a high enough reputation to include images, so, it's just a link for now.
Here is a gist of an example function using this concept that's a little more advanced: https://gist.github.com/scagood/bd99371c072d49a4fee29d193252f5fc#file-matchquotes-js
here is one that work with both " and ' and you easily add others at the start.
("|')(?:\\\1|[^\1])*?\1
it uses the backreference (\1) match exactley what is in the first group (" or ').
http://www.regular-expressions.info/backref.html
One has to remember that regexps aren't a silver bullet for everything string-y. Some stuff are simpler to do with a cursor and linear, manual, seeking. A CFL would do the trick pretty trivially, but there aren't many CFL implementations (afaik).
A more extensive version of https://stackoverflow.com/a/10786066/1794894
/"([^"\\]{50,}(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"|\'[^\'\\]{50,}(\\.[^\'\\]*)*\'|“[^”\\]{50,}(\\.[^“\\]*)*”/
This version also contains
Minimum quote length of 50
Extra type of quotes (open “ and close ”)
If it is searched from the beginning, maybe this can work?
\"((\\\")|[^\\])*\"
I faced a similar problem trying to remove quoted strings that may interfere with parsing of some files.
I ended up with a two-step solution that beats any convoluted regex you can come up with:
line = line.replace("\\\"","\'"); // Replace escaped quotes with something easier to handle
line = line.replaceAll("\"([^\"]*)\"","\"x\""); // Simple is beautiful
Easier to read and probably more efficient.
If your IDE is IntelliJ Idea, you can forget all these headaches and store your regex into a String variable and as you copy-paste it inside the double-quote it will automatically change to a regex acceptable format.
example in Java:
String s = "\"en_usa\":[^\\,\\}]+";
now you can use this variable in your regexp or anywhere.
(?<="|')(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*(?="|')
" It\'s big \"problem "
match result:
It\'s big \"problem
("|')(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*("|')
" It\'s big \"problem "
match result:
" It\'s big \"problem "
Messed around at regexpal and ended up with this regex: (Don't ask me how it works, I barely understand even tho I wrote it lol)
"(([^"\\]?(\\\\)?)|(\\")+)+"

Replace patterns that are inside delimiters using a regular expression call

I need to clip out all the occurances of the pattern '--' that are inside single quotes in long string (leaving intact the ones that are outside single quotes).
Is there a RegEx way of doing this?
(using it with an iterator from the language is OK).
For example, starting with
"xxxx rt / $ 'dfdf--fggh-dfgdfg' ghgh- dddd -- 'dfdf' ghh-g '--ggh--' vcbcvb"
I should end up with:
"xxxx rt / $ 'dfdffggh-dfgdfg' ghgh- dddd -- 'dfdf' ghh-g 'ggh' vcbcvb"
So I am looking for a regex that could be run from the following languages as shown:
+-------------+------------------------------------------+
| Language | RegEx |
+-------------+------------------------------------------+
| JavaScript | input.replace(/someregex/g, "") |
| PHP | preg_replace('/someregex/', "", input) |
| Python | re.sub(r'someregex', "", input) |
| Ruby | input.gsub(/someregex/, "") |
+-------------+------------------------------------------+
I found another way to do this from an answer by Greg Hewgill at Qn138522
It is based on using this regex (adapted to contain the pattern I was looking for):
--(?=[^\']*'([^']|'[^']*')*$)
Greg explains:
"What this does is use the non-capturing match (?=...) to check that the character x is within a quoted string. It looks for some nonquote characters up to the next quote, then looks for a sequence of either single characters or quoted groups of characters, until the end of the string. This relies on your assumption that the quotes are always balanced. This is also not very efficient."
The usage examples would be :
JavaScript: input.replace(/--(?=[^']*'([^']|'[^']*')*$)/g, "")
PHP: preg_replace('/--(?=[^\']*'([^']|'[^']*')*$)/', "", input)
Python: re.sub(r'--(?=[^\']*'([^']|'[^']*')*$)', "", input)
Ruby: input.gsub(/--(?=[^\']*'([^']|'[^']*')*$)/, "")
I have tested this for Ruby and it provides the desired result.
This cannot be done with regular expressions, because you need to maintain state on whether you're inside single quotes or outside, and regex is inherently stateless. (Also, as far as I understand, single quotes can be escaped without terminating the "inside" region).
Your best bet is to iterate through the string character by character, keeping a boolean flag on whether or not you're inside a quoted region - and remove the --'s that way.
If bending the rules a little is allowed, this could work:
import re
p = re.compile(r"((?:^[^']*')?[^']*?(?:'[^']*'[^']*?)*?)(-{2,})")
txt = "xxxx rt / $ 'dfdf--fggh-dfgdfg' ghgh- dddd -- 'dfdf' ghh-g '--ggh--' vcbcvb"
print re.sub(p, r'\1-', txt)
Output:
xxxx rt / $ 'dfdf-fggh-dfgdfg' ghgh- dddd -- 'dfdf' ghh-g '-ggh-' vcbcvb
The regex:
( # Group 1
(?:^[^']*')? # Start of string, up till the first single quote
[^']*? # Inside the single quotes, as few characters as possible
(?:
'[^']*' # No double dashes inside theses single quotes, jump to the next.
[^']*?
)*? # as few as possible
)
(-{2,}) # The dashes themselves (Group 2)
If there where different delimiters for start and end, you could use something like this:
-{2,}(?=[^'`]*`)
Edit: I realized that if the string does not contain any quotes, it will match all double dashes in the string. One way of fixing it would be to change
(?:^[^']*')?
in the beginning to
(?:^[^']*'|(?!^))
Updated regex:
((?:^[^']*'|(?!^))[^']*?(?:'[^']*'[^']*?)*?)(-{2,})
Hm. There might be a way in Python if there are no quoted apostrophes, given that there is the (?(id/name)yes-pattern|no-pattern) construct in regular expressions, but it goes way over my head currently.
Does this help?
def remove_double_dashes_in_apostrophes(text):
return "'".join(
part.replace("--", "") if (ix&1) else part
for ix, part in enumerate(text.split("'")))
Seems to work for me. What it does, is split the input text to parts on apostrophes, and replace the "--" only when the part is odd-numbered (i.e. there has been an odd number of apostrophes before the part). Note about "odd numbered": part numbering starts from zero!
You can use the following sed script, I believe:
:again
s/'\(.*\)--\(.*\)'/'\1\2'/g
t again
Store that in a file (rmdashdash.sed) and do whatever exec magic in your scripting language allows you to do the following shell equivalent:
sed -f rmdotdot.sed < file containing your input data
What the script does is:
:again <-- just a label
s/'\(.*\)--\(.*\)'/'\1\2'/g
substitute, for the pattern ' followed by anything followed by -- followed by anything followed by ', just the two anythings within quotes.
t again <-- feed the resulting string back into sed again.
Note that this script will convert '----' into '', since it is a sequence of two --'s within quotes. However, '---' will be converted into '-'.
Ain't no school like old school.