I need to write a regex that matches patterns like this:
[[string|string]]
It's the same string twice within that specific syntax (I don't want to match the brackets themselves). I managed to come up with this:
(?<=\[\[)(.*)(?=\|)\|\1\]\]
However, it's not matching for some reason and I don't understand where's my mistake.
UPDATE: Turns out it wasn't working because my code was dirty and there were some ● characters in the first string, so both strings weren't equal: https://regexr.com/3n7ni
Removing those extraneous characters made the regex match, although it still needed tweaks (like not matching the closure brackets): https://regexr.com/3n7o7
See regex in use here
\[{2}([^|\]]+)\|\1]{2}
\[{2} Matches [ literally, twice
([^|\]]+) Captures one or more of any character except | or ] into capture group 1
\| Matches | literally
\1 Matches the text most recently captured into capture group 1
]{2} Matches ] literally, twice
To match the full pattern you can update your regex to include the first 2 brackets:
\[\[(.*)\|\1\]\]
I think you could also do without this positive lookahead (?=\|).
Your problem is the use of a greedy match (.*) (consume as much as possible). You should be using a reluctant match (.*?) (consume as little as possible):
\[\[(.*?)\|\1\]\]
See live demo.
Note that your look ahead (?=\|) is useless.
Related
For example, I have the word: sh0rt-t3rm.
How can I get the t3rm part using perl regex?
I could get sh0rt by using [(a-zA-Z0-9)+]\[-\], but \[-\][(a-zA-Z0-9)+] doesn't work to get t3rm.
The syntax used for the regex is not correct to get either sh0rt or t3rm
You flipped the square brackets and the parenthesis, and the hyphen does not have to be between square brackets.
To get sh0rt in sh0rt-t3rm you you might use for example one of:
Regex
Demo
Explanation
\b([a-zA-Z0-9]+)-
Demo 1
\b is a word boundary to prevent a partial word match, the value is in capture group 1.
\b[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?=-)
Demo 2
Match the allowed chars in the character class, and assert a - to the right using a positive lookahead (?=-)
To get t3rm in sh0rt-t3rm you might use for example one of:
Regex
Demo
Explanation
-([a-zA-Z0-9]+)\b
Demo 3
The other way around with a leading - and get the value from capture group 1.
-\K[a-zA-Z0-9]+\b
Demo 4
Match - and use \K to keep out what is matched so far. Then match 1 or more times the allowed chars in the character class.
If your whole target string is literally just sh0rt-t3rm then you want all that comes after the -.
So the barest and minimal version, cut precisely for this description, is
my ($capture) = $string =~ /-(.+)/;
We need parenthesis on the left-hand-side so to make regex run in a list context because that's when it returns the matches (otherwise it returns true/false, normally 1 or '').
But what if the preceding text may have - itself? Then make sure to match all up to that last -
my ($capture) = $string =~ /.*-(.+)/;
Here the "greedy" nature of the * quantifier makes the previous . match all it possibly can so that the whole pattern still matches; thus it goes up until the very last -.
There are of course many other variations on how the data may look like, other than just being one hyphenated-word. In particular, if it's a part of a text, you may want to include word-boundaries
my ($capture) = $string =~ /\b.*?-(.+?)\b/;
Here we also need to adjust our "wild-card"-like pattern .+ by limiting it using ? so that it is not greedy. This matches the first such hyphenated word in the $string. But if indeed only "word" characters fly then we can just use \w (instead of . and word-boundary anchors)
my ($capture) = $string =~ /\w*?-(\w+)/;
Note that \w matches [a-zA-Z0-9_] only, which excludes some characters that may appear in normal text (English, not to mention all other writing systems).
But this is clearly getting pickier and cookier and would need careful close inspection and testing, and more complete knowledge of what the data may look like.
Perl offers its own tutorial, perlretut, and the main full reference is perlre
-([a-zA-Z0-9]+) will match a - followed by a word, with just the word being captured.
Demo
I want to extract matches of the clauses match-this that is enclosed with anything other than the tilde (~) in the string.
For example, in this string:
match-this~match-this~ match-this ~match-this#match-this~match-this~match-this
There should be 5 matches from above. The matches are explained below (enclosed by []):
Either match-this~ or match-this is correct for first match.
match-this is correct for 2nd match.
Either ~match-this# or ~match-this is correct for 3rd match.
Either #match-this~ or #match-this or match-this~ is correct for 4th match.
Either ~match-this or match-this is correct for 5th match.
I can use the pattern ~match-this~ catch these ~match-this~, but when I tried the negation of it (?!(~match-this)), it literally catches all nulls.
When I tried the pattern [^~]match-this[^~], it catches only one match (the 2nd match from above). And when I tried to add asterisk wild card on any negation of tilde, either [^~]match-this[^~]* or [^~]*match-this[^~], I got only 2 matches. When I put the asterisk wild card on both, it catches all match-this including those which enclosed by tildes ~.
Is it possible to achieve this with only one regex test? Or Does it need more??
If you also want to match #match-this~ as a separate match, you would have to account for # while matching, as [^~] also matches #
You could match what you don't want, and capture in a group what you want to keep.
~[^~#]*~|((?:(?!match-this).)*match-this(?:(?!match-this)[^#~])*)
Explanation
~[^~#]*~ Match any char except ~ or # between ~
| Or
( Capture group 1
(?:(?!match-this).)* Match any char if not directly followed by *match-this~
match-this Match literally
(?:(?!match-this)[^#~])* Match any char except ~ or # if not directly followed by match this
) Close group 1
See a regex demo and a Python demo.
Example
import re
pattern = r"~[^~#]*~|((?:(?!match-this).)*match-this(?:(?!match-this)[^#~])*)"
s = "match-this~match-this~ match-this ~match-this#match-this~match-this~match-this"
res = [m for m in re.findall(pattern, s) if m]
print (res)
Output
['match-this', ' match-this ', '~match-this', '#match-this', 'match-this']
If all five matches can be "match-this" (contradicting the requirement for the 3rd match) you can match the regular expression
~match-this~|(\bmatch-this\b)
and keep only matches that are captured (to capture group 1). The idea is to discard matches that are not captured and keep matches that are captured. When the regex engine matches "~match-this~" its internal string pointer is moved just past the closing "~", thereby skipping an unwanted substring.
Demo
The regular expression can be broken down as follows.
~match-this~ # match literal
| # or
( # begin capture group 1
\b # match a word boundary
match-this # match literal
\b # match a word boundary
) # end capture group 1
Being so simple, this regular expression would be supported by most regex engines.
For this you need both kinds of lookarounds. This will match the 5 spots you want, and there's a reason why it only works this way and not another and why the prefix and/or suffix can't be included:
(?<=~)match-this(?!~)|(?<!~)match-this(?=~)|(?<!~)match-this(?!~)
Explaining lookarounds:
(?=...) is a positive lookahead: what comes next must match
(?!...) is a negative lookahead: what comes next must not match
(?<=...) is a positive lookbehind: what comes before must match
(?<!...) is a negative lookbehind: what comes before must not match
Why other ways won't work:
[^~] is a class with negation, but it always needs one character to be there and also consumes that character for the match itself. The former is a problem for a starting text. The latter is a problem for having advanced too far, so a "don't match" character is gone already.
(^|[^~]) would solve the first problem: either the text starts or it must be a character not matching this. We could do the same for ending texts, but this is a dead again anyway.
Only lookarounds remain, and even then we have to code all 3 variants, hence the two |.
As per the nature of lookarounds the character in front or behind cannot be captured. Additionally if you want to also match either a leading or a trailing character then this collides with recognizing the next potential match.
It's a difference between telling the engine to "not match" a character and to tell the engine to "look out" for something without actually consuming characters and advancing the current position in the text. Also not every regex engine supports all lookarounds, so it matters where you actually want to use it. For me it works fine in TextPad 8 and should also work fine in PCRE (f.e. in PHP). As per regex101.com/r/CjcaWQ/1 it also works as expected by me.
What irritates me: if the leading and/or trailing character of a found match is important to you, then just extract it from the input when processing all the matches, since they also come with starting positions and lengths: first match at position 0 for 10 characters means you look at input text position -1 and 10.
I have the following languages or language locale codes in a URL and i am trying to identify through REGEX. I was partially successful in identifying them but it is failing for some scenarios
Languages that i am testing with
en-us -- Passes
us -- Fails
Here is the REGEX that i have
([a-zA-Z]{2}|[a-zA-Z]{2}-[a-zA-Z]{2}\/)c\/(deals-and-tips\/)?
For instance:
https://forum.leasehackr.com/en-us/c/deals-and-tips (passes)
https://forum.leasehackr.com/us/c/deals-and-tips (fails)
What am I missing in the above REGEX?
The regex you wanted is:
([a-zA-Z]{2}|[a-zA-Z]{2}-[a-zA-Z]{2})\/c\/(deals-and-tips\/)?
The difference from your regex is that I moved the first \/ from inside the parenthesis to outside (to sit with c\/).
Test here.
The last / fails the match in any case since your urls doesn't have it, in any way I would rewrite your regex as this: ([a-zA-Z]{2})(-[a-zA-Z]{2})?\/c\/(deals-and-tips)?.
This way it always looks for the first part (en) and consider the second (-us) as optional.
Alternatively use (\w{2})(-\w{2})?\/c\/(deals-and-tips)?, if you don't mind risking to match underscores and similar simbols
The reason your pattern does not match us is because the alternation ([a-zA-Z]{2}|[a-zA-Z]{2}-[a-zA-Z]{2}\/) only matches the \/ in the second part of the alternation.
Also it does not match the last group with deals-and-tips because there is no trailing \/ in the example data.
Your updated pattern might look like
([a-zA-Z]{2}|[a-zA-Z]{2}-[a-zA-Z]{2})\/c\/(deals-and-tips)?
Regex demo
You could shorten the pattern a bit by using an optional non capturing group (?:-[a-zA-Z]{2})? inside the first capturing group to optionally match the part starting with a hyphen.
As in the example data you could match the leading \/ in front of the capturing group to get a more efficient match.
\/([a-zA-Z]{2}(?:-[a-zA-Z]{2})?)\/c\/(deals-and-tips)?
In parts
\/ To be a bit more precise, match the leading /
( Capture group 1
[a-zA-Z]{2} Match 2 chars a-z
(?:-[a-zA-Z]{2})? Optionally match - and 2 chars a-z
) Close group
\/c\/ Match /c/deals-and-tips`
(deals-and-tips)? Optional capture group 2 match deals-and-tips
Regex demo
Note that if you use another delimiter than / you don't have to escape the forward slash.
I have an advanced regex question (unless I am overthinking this).
With my basic knowledge of Regex, it is trivial to match static capture group further down in the string.
P(.): D:\1
Correctly matches
Pb: Db
Pa: Da
and (correctly) does not match
Pa: D:b
So far so good. However, what I need to capture is a set of [a-z]+ after the P and match the one character. So that these should also match:
Pabc: D:c
Pabc: D:a
Pba: D:b
Pba: D:a
but not
Pabc: D:x
Pba: D:g
I started going down the path of writing separate patterns like so (spaces added around the alternation for clarity):
P(.): D:\1 | P(.)(.): D:(\1|\2) | P(.)(.)(.): D:(\1|\2|\3)
But I cannot make even this clumsy solution work in Javascript Regex.
Is there an elegant, correct way to do this? Can it be done with Javascript's limited engine?
The following regex will do it:
P.*(.).*: D:\1
.*(.).* will match one or more characters, capturing one of them.
If the captured character matches the character after D:, then the regex matches.
If the captured character doesn't match, backtracking will ensure that it tries again with a different captured character, until all combinations have been tried.
See regex101.com for running example.
I'm trying to match first occurrence of window.location.replace("http://stackoverflow.com") in some HTML string.
Especially I want to capture the URL of the first window.location.replace entry in whole HTML string.
So for capturing URL I formulated this 2 rules:
it should be after this string: window.location.redirect("
it should be before this string ")
To achieve it I think I need to use lookbehind (for 1st rule) and lookahead (for 2nd rule).
I end up with this Regex:
.+(?<=window\.location\.redirect\(\"?=\"\))
It doesn't work. I'm not even sure that it legal to mix both rules like I did.
Can you please help me with translating my rules to Regex? Other ways of doing this (without lookahead(behind)) also appreciated.
The pattern you wrote is really not the one you need as it matches something very different from what you expect: text window.location.redirect("=") in text window.location.redirect("=") something. And it will only work in PCRE/Python if you remove the ? from before \" (as lookbehinds should be fixed-width in PCRE). It will work with ? in .NET regex.
If it is JS, you just cannot use a lookbehind as its regex engine does not support them.
Instead, use a capturing group around the unknown part you want to get:
/window\.location\.redirect\("([^"]*)"\)/
or
/window\.location\.redirect\("(.*?)"\)/
See the regex demo
No /g modifier will allow matching just one, first occurrence. Access the value you need inside Group 1.
The ([^"]*) captures 0+ characters other than a double quote (URLs you need should not have it). If these URLs you have contain a ", you should use the second approach as (.*?) will match any 0+ characters other than a newline up to the first ").