I'm having trouble with this regex. (https://regex101.com/r/vQLlyY/1)
My pattern is working and is:
(?<=Property: )(.*?)(?= \(Contact)|(?<=Property: )(.*?)(?= - )
You'll see in the link that the property text is extracted in both these strings:
Property: This is the property (Contact - Warren)
Property: This is another property - Warren
In my code, this pattern is stored like this:
$this->rex["property"][2] = '/(?<=Property: )(.*?)(?= \(Contact)|(?<=Property: )(.*?)(?= - )/s'
Then, it is extracted like this:
foreach ($this->rex as $key => $value ) {
if (isset($value[$provider])) {
preg_match_all($value[$provider], $emailtext, $matches);
if (!empty($matches[1][0])) {
$emaildetails[$key] = trim(preg_replace("/\r|\n/", "", $matches[1][0]));
} else {
$emaildetails[$key] = "";
}
}
}
In this example, $provider = 2
My problem I'm sure is with the blackslash because I can't get this code to pickup the (Contact part of the pattern where I need to escape the bracket. I know the code works because I have many other patterns in use. Also, this works for the property text if the pattern is stored like this:
$this->rex["property"][2] = '/(?<=Property: )(.*?)(?= - )/s
So, am I storing the pattern correctly with the escaped bracket, or is that even my problem? Thanks in advance!
Because you're using separate capture groups, the different paths are ending up in different match indexes. For instance, the first line (the Contact - Warren one) is storing the match result in index 1, where the second line has an empty string in index 1 and the match result you're looking for in index 2.
To solve this issue, you can use non-capture groups or you can rewrite your expression to use positive lookaheads. The benefits of the former include allowing for quantifiers. The benefits of the latter include not having the entire match result end up in your 0 match index.
Example of non-capture group: (?<=Property: )(.*?)\s*(?:\(Contact|- ) https://regex101.com/r/vQLlyY/2.
Example of positive-lookahead: (?<=Property: )(.*?)(?= \(Contact| - ) https://regex101.com/r/vQLlyY/3.
Related
I have a string that looks like the following:
<#399969178745962506> hello to <#!104729417217032192>
I have a dictionary containing both that looks like following:
{"399969178745962506", "One"},
{"104729417217032192", "Two"}
My goal here is to replace the <#399969178745962506> into the value of that number key, which in this case would be One
Regex.Replace(arg.Content, "(?<=<)(.*?)(?=>)", m => userDic.ContainsKey(m.Value) ? userDic[m.Value] : m.Value);
My current regex is as following: (?<=<)(.*?)(?=>) which only matches everything in between < and > which would in this case leave both #399969178745962506 and #!104729417217032192
I can't just ignore the # sign, because the ! sign is not there every time. So it could be optimal to only get numbers with something like \d+
I need to figure out how to only get the numbers between < and > but I can't for the life of me figure out how.
Very grateful for any help!
In C#, you may use 2 approaches: a lookaround based on (since lookbehind patterns can be variable width) and a capturing group approach.
Lookaround based approach
The pattern that will easily help you get the digits in the right context is
(?<=<#!?)\d+(?=>)
See the regex demo
The (?<=<#!?) is a positive lookbehind that requires <= or <=! immediately to the left of the current location and (?=>) is a positive lookahead that requires > char immediately to the right of the current location.
Capturing approach
You may use the following pattern that will capture the digits inside the expected <...> substrings:
<#!?(\d+)>
Details
<# - a literal <# substring
!? - an optional exclamation sign
(\d+) - capturing group 1 that matches one or more digits
> - a literal > sign.
Note that the values you need can be accessed via match.Groups[1].Value as shown in the snippet above.
Usage:
var userDic = new Dictionary<string, string> {
{"399969178745962506", "One"},
{"104729417217032192", "Two"}
};
var p = #"<#!?(\d+)>";
var s = "<#399969178745962506> hello to <#!104729417217032192>";
Console.WriteLine(
Regex.Replace(s, p, m => userDic.ContainsKey(m.Groups[1].Value) ?
userDic[m.Groups[1].Value] : m.Value
)
); // => One hello to Two
// Or, if you need to keep <#, <#! and >
Console.WriteLine(
Regex.Replace(s, #"(<#!?)(\d+)>", m => userDic.ContainsKey(m.Groups[2].Value) ?
$"{m.Groups[1].Value}{userDic[m.Groups[2].Value]}>" : m.Value
)
); // => <#One> hello to <#!Two>
See the C# demo.
To extract just the numbers from you're given format, use this regex pattern:
(?<=<#|<#!)(\d+)(?=>)
See it work in action: https://regexr.com/3j6ia
You can use non-capturing groups to exclude parts of the needed pattern to be inside the group:
(?<=<)(?:#?!?)(.*?)(?=>)
alternativly you could name the inner group and use the named group to get it:
(?<=<)(?:#?!?)(?<yourgroupname>.*?)(?=>)
Access it via m.Groups["yourgroupname"].Value - more see f.e. How do I access named capturing groups in a .NET Regex?
Regex: (?:<#!?(\d+)>)
Details:
(?:) Non-capturing group
<# matches the characters <# literally
? Matches between zero and one times
(\d+) 1st Capturing Group \d+ matches a digit (equal to [0-9])
Regex demo
string text = "<#399969178745962506> hello to <#!104729417217032192>";
Dictionary<string, string> list = new Dictionary<string, string>() { { "399969178745962506", "One" }, { "104729417217032192", "Two" } };
text = Regex.Replace(text, #"(?:<#!?(\d+)>)", m => list.ContainsKey(m.Groups[1].Value) ? list[m.Groups[1].Value] : m.Value);
Console.WriteLine(text); \\ One hello to Two
Console.ReadLine();
I've got two files:
1st: Entries.txt
confirmation.resend
send
confirmation.showResendForm
login.header
login.loginBtn
2nd: Used_Entries.txt
confirmation.showResendForm = some value
login.header = some other value
I want to find all entries from the first file (Entries.txt) that have not been asigned a value in the 2nd file (Used_Entries.txt)
In this example I'd like the following result:
confirmation.resend
send
login.loginBtn
In the result confirmation.showResendForm and login.header do not show up because these exist in the Used_Entries.txt
How do I do this? I've been playing around with regular expressions but haven't been able to solve it. A bash script or sth would be much appreciated!
You can do this with regex. But get your code mood ready, because you can't match both files with regex at once, and we do want to match both contents with regex at once. Well, that means you must have at least some understanding of your language, I would like you to concatenate the contents from the two files with at least a new line in between.
This regex solution expects your string to be matched to be in this format:
text (no equals sign)
text
text
...
key (no equals sign) ␣ (optional whitespace) = (literal equal) whatever (our regex will skip this part.)
key=whatever
key=whatever
Do I have your attention? Yes? Please see the following regex (using techniques accessible to most regex engines):
/(^[^=\n]+$)(?!(?s).*^\1\s*=)/m
Inspired from a recent answer I saw from zx81, you can switch to (?s) flag in the middle to switch to DOTALL mode suddenly, allowing you to start multiline matching with . in the middle of a RegExp. Using this technique and the set syntax above, here's what the regex does, as an explanation:
(^[^=\n]+$) Goes through all the text (no equals sign) elements. Enforces no equals signs or newlines in the capture. This means our regex hits every text element as a line, and tries to match it appropriately.
(?! Opens a negative lookahead group. Asserts that this match will not locate the following:
(?s).* Any number of characters or new lines - As this is a greedy match, will throw our matcher pointer to the very end of the string, skipping to the last parts of the document to backtrack and scoop up quickly.
^\1\s*= The captured key, followed by an equals sign after some optional whitespaces, in its own line.
) Ends our group.
View a Regex Demo!
A regex demo with more test cases
I'm stupid. I could had just put this:
/(^[^=\n]+$)(?!.*^\1\s*=)/sm
I've been going at this a little bit to complex and just solved it with a small script in scala:
import scala.io.Source
object HelloWorld {
def main(args: Array[String]) {
val entries = (for(line <- Source.fromFile("Entries.txt").getLines()) yield {
line
}).toList
val usedEntries = (for(line <- Source.fromFile("Used_Entries.txt").getLines()) yield {
line.dropRight(line.length - line.indexOf(' '))
}).toList
println(entries)
println(usedEntries)
val missingEntries = (for {
entry <- entries
if !usedEntries.exists(_ == entry)
} yield {
entry
}).toList
println(missingEntries)
println("Missing Entries: ")
println()
for {
missingEntry <- missingEntries
} yield {
println(missingEntry)
}
}
}
import re
e=open("Entries.txt",'r')
m=e.readlines()
u=open("Used_Entries.txt",'r')
s=u.read()
y=re.sub(r"= .*","",s)
for i in m:
if i.strip() in [k.strip() for k in y.split("\n")] :
pass
else:
print i.strip()
I have a list of email addresses which take various forms:
john#smith.com
Angie <angie#aol.com>
"Mark Jones" <mark#jones.com>
I'm trying to cut only the email portion from each. Ex: I only want the angie#aol.com from the second item in the list. In other words, I want to match everything between < and > or match everything if it doesn't exist.
I know this can be done in 2 steps:
Capture on (?<=\<)(.*)(?=\>).
If there is no match, use the entire text.
But now I'm wondering: Can both steps be reduced into one simple regular expression?
What about:
(?<=\<).*(?=\>)|^[^<]*$
^[^>]*$ will match the entire string, but only if it doesn't contain a <. And that's OR'ed (|) with what you had.
Explanation:
^ - start of string
[^<] - not-< character
[^<]* - zero or more not-< characters
$ - end of string
You're after an exclusive or operator. Have a look here.
(\<.+\#.+\..+\>) matches those email addresses in side <> only...
(\<.+\#.+\..+\>)|(.+) matches everything instead of matching the first condition in the OR then skipping the second.
Depending on what language you are using to implement this regex, you might be able to use an inbuilt exclusive or operator. Otherwise, you might need to put a bit of logic in there to use the string if no matches are found. E.g. (pseudo type code):
string = 'your data above';
if( regex_finds_match ( '(\<.+\#.+\..+\>)', string ) ) {
// found match, use the match
str_to_use = regex_match(es);
} else {
// didn't find a match:
str_to_use = string;
}
It is possible, but your current logic is probably simpler. Here is what I came up with, email address will always be in the first capturing group:
^(?:.*<|)(.*?)(?:>|$)
Example: http://rubular.com/r/8tKHaYYY4T
I'm trying to learn something about regular expressions.
Here is what I'm going to match:
/parent/child
/parent/child?
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/
/parent/child/?
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789
My expression should "grabs" abc123 and def456.
And now just an example about what I'm not going to match ("question mark" is missing):
/parent/child/firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
Well, I built the following expression:
^(?:/parent/child){1}(?:^(?:/\?|\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?
But that doesn't work.
Could you help me to understand what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE 1
Ok, I made other tests.
I'm trying to fix the previous version with something like this:
/parent/child(?:(?:\?|/\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?$
Let me explain my idea:
Must start with /parent/child:
/parent/child
Following group is optional
(?: ... )?
The previous optional group must starts with ? or /?
(?:\?|/\?)+
Optional parameters (I grab values if specified parameters are part of querystring)
(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?
End of line
$
Any advice?
UPDATE 2
My solution must be based just on regular expressions.
Just for example, I previously wrote the following one:
/parent/child(?:[?&/]*(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*))*$
And that works pretty nice.
But it matches the following input too:
/parent/child/firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
How could I modify the expression in order to not match the previous string?
You didn't specify a language so I'll just usre Perl. So basically instead of matching everything, I just matched exactly what I thought you needed. Correct me if I am wrong please.
while ($subject =~ m/(?<==)\w+?(?=&|\W|$)/g) {
# matched text = $&
}
(?<= # Assert that the regex below can be matched, with the match ending at this position (positive lookbehind)
= # Match the character “=” literally
)
\\w # Match a single character that is a “word character” (letters, digits, and underscores)
+? # Between one and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy)
(?= # Assert that the regex below can be matched, starting at this position (positive lookahead)
# Match either the regular expression below (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)
& # Match the character “&” literally
| # Or match regular expression number 2 below (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)
\\W # Match a single character that is a “non-word character”
| # Or match regular expression number 3 below (the entire group fails if this one fails to match)
\$ # Assert position at the end of the string (or before the line break at the end of the string, if any)
)
Output:
This regex will work as long as you know what your parameter names are going to be and you're sure that they won't change.
\/parent\/child\/?\?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?
Whilst regex is not the best solution for this (the above code examples will be far more efficient, as string functions are way faster than regexes) this will work if you need a regex solution with up to 3 parameters. Out of interest, why must the solution use only regex?
In any case, this regex will match the following strings:
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789
It will now only match those containing query string parameters, and put them into capture groups for you.
What language are you using to process your matches?
If you are using preg_match with PHP, you can get the whole match as well as capture groups in an array with
preg_match($regex, $string, $matches);
Then you can access the whole match with $matches[0] and the rest with $matches[1], $matches[2], etc.
If you want to add additional parameters you'll also need to add them in the regex too, and add additional parts to get your data. For example, if you had
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&fourthparam=jkl01112&thirdparam=ghi789
The regex will become
\/parent\/child\/?\?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?
This will become a bit more tedious to maintain as you add more parameters, though.
You can optionally include ^ $ at the start and end if the multi-line flag is enabled. If you also need to match the whole lines without query strings, wrap this whole regex in a non-capture group (including ^ $) and add
|(?:^\/parent\/child\/?\??$)
to the end.
You're not escaping the /s in your regex for starters and using {1} for a single repetition of something is unnecessary; you only use those when you want more than one repetition or a range of repetitions.
And part of what you're trying to do is simply not a good use of a regex. I'll show you an easier way to deal with that: you want to use something like split and put the information into a hash that you can check the contents of later. Because you didn't specify a language, I'm just going to use Perl for my example, but every language I know with regexes also has easy access to hashes and something like split, so this should be easy enough to port:
# I picked an example to show how this works.
my $route = '/parent/child/?first=123&second=345&third=678';
my %params; # I'm going to put those URL parameters in this hash.
# Perl has a way to let me avoid escaping the /s, but I wanted an example that
# works in other languages too.
if ($route =~ m/\/parent\/child\/\?(.*)/) { # Use the regex for this part
print "Matched route.\n";
# But NOT for this part.
my $query = $1; # $1 is a Perl thing. It contains what (.*) matched above.
my #items = split '&', $query; # Each item is something like param=123
foreach my $item (#items) {
my ($param, $value) = split '=', $item;
$params{$param} = $value; # Put the parameters in a hash for easy access.
print "$param set to $value \n";
}
}
# Now you can check the parameter values and do whatever you need to with them.
# And you can add new parameters whenever you want, etc.
if ($params{'first'} eq '123') {
# Do whatever
}
My solution:
/(?:\w+/)*(?:(?:\w+)?\?(?:\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)?|\w+|)
Explain:
/(?:\w+/)* match /parent/child/ or /parent/
(?:\w+)?\?(?:\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)? match child?firstparam=abc123 or ?firstparam=abc123 or ?
\w+ match text like child
..|) match nothing(empty)
If you need only query string, pattern would reduce such as:
/(?:\w+/)*(?:\w+)?\?(\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)
If you want to get every parameter from query string, this is a Ruby sample:
re = /\/(?:\w+\/)*(?:\w+)?\?(\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)/
s = '/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789'
if m = s.match(re)
query_str = m[1] # now, you can 100% trust this string
query_str.scan(/(\w+)=(\w+)/) do |param,value| #grab parameter
printf("%s, %s\n", param, value)
end
end
output
secondparam, def456
firstparam, abc123
thirdparam, ghi789
This script will help you.
First, i check, is there any symbol like ?.
Then, i kill first part of line (left from ?).
Next, i split line by &, where each value splitted by =.
my $r = q"/parent/child
/parent/child?
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/
/parent/child/?
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789";
for my $string(split /\n/, $r){
if (index($string,'?')!=-1){
substr($string, 0, index($string,'?')+1,"");
#say "string = ".$string;
if (index($string,'=')!=-1){
my #params = map{$_ = [split /=/, $_];}split/\&/, $string;
$"="\n";
say "$_->[0] === $_->[1]" for (#params);
say "######next########";
}
else{
#print "there is no params!"
}
}
else{
#say "there is no params!";
}
}
I have the following string:
123322
In theory, the regex 1.*2 should match the following:
12 (because * can be zero characters)
12332
123322
If I use the regex 1.*2 it matches 123322.
Using 1.*?2, it will match 12.
Is there a way to match 12332 too?
The perfect thing would be to get all possible matchess in the string (no matter if one match is substring of another)
No, unless there is something else added to the regex to clarify what it should do it will either be greedy or non-greedy. There is no in-betweeny ;)
1(.*?2)*$
you will have multiple captures which you can concatenate to form all possible matches
see here:regex tester
click on 'table' and expand the captures tree
You would need a separate expression for each case, depending on the number of twos you want to match:
1(.*?2){1} #same as 1.*?2
1(.*?2){2}
1(.*?2){3}
...
Generally, this isn't possible. A regex matching engine isn't really designed to find overlapping matches. A quick solution is simply to check the pattern on all substrings manually:
string text = "1123322";
for (int start = 0; start < text.Length - 1; start++)
{
for (int length = 0; length <= text.Length - start; length++)
{
string subString = text.Substring(start, length);
if (Regex.IsMatch(subString, "^1.*2$"))
Console.WriteLine("{0}-{1}: {2}", start, start + length, subString);
}
}
Working example: http://ideone.com/aNKnJ
Now, is it possible to get a whole-regex solution? Mostly, the answer is no. However, .Net does has a few tricks in its sleeve to help us: it allows variable length lookbehind, and allows each capturing group to remember all captures (most engines only return the last match of each group). Abusing these, we can simulate the same for loop inside the regex engine:
string text = "1123322!";
string allMatchesPattern = #"
(?<=^ # Starting at the local end position, look all the way to the back
(
(?=(?<Here>1.*2\G))? # on each position from the start until here (\G),
. # *try* to match our pattern and capture it,
)* # but advance even if you fail to match it.
)
";
MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(text, allMatchesPattern,
RegexOptions.ExplicitCapture | RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace);
foreach (Match endPosition in matches)
{
foreach (Capture startPosition in endPosition.Groups["Here"].Captures)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0}-{1}: {2}", startPosition.Index,
endPosition.Index - 1, startPosition.Value);
}
}
Note that currently there's a small bug there - the engine doesn't try to match the last ending position ($), so you loose a few matches. For now, adding a ! at the end of the string solves that issue.
working example: http://ideone.com/eB8Hb