I'm having difficulty writing a Perl program to extract the word following a certain word.
For example:
Today i'm not going anywhere except to office.
I want the word after anywhere, so the output should be except.
I have tried this
my $words = "Today i'm not going anywhere except to office.";
my $w_after = ( $words =~ /anywhere (\S+)/ );
but it seems this is wrong.
Very close:
my ($w_after) = ($words =~ /anywhere\s+(\S+)/);
^ ^ ^^^
+--------+ |
Note 1 Note 2
Note 1: =~ returns a list of captured items, so the assignment target needs to be a list.
Note 2: allow one or more blanks after anywhere
In Perl v5.22 and later, you can use \b{wb} to get better results for natural language. The pattern could be
/anywhere\b{wb}.+?\b{wb}(.+?\b{wb})/
"wb" stands for word break, and it will account for words that have apostrophes in them, like "I'll", that plain \b doesn't.
.+?\b{wb}
matches the shortest non-empty sequence of characters that don't have a word break in them. The first one matches the span of spaces in your sentence; and the second one matches "except". It is enclosed in parentheses, so upon completion $1 contains "except".
\b{wb} is documented most fully in perlrebackslash
First, you have to write parentheses around left side expression of = operator to force array context for regexp evaluation. See m// and // in perlop documentation.[1] You can write
parentheses also around =~ binding operator to improve readability but it is not necessary because =~ has pretty high priority.
Use POSIX Character Classes word
my ($w_after) = ($words =~ / \b anywhere \W+ (\w+) \b /x);
Note I'm using x so whitespaces in regexp are ignored. Also use \b word boundary to anchor regexp correctly.
[1]: I write my ($w_after) just for convenience because you can write my ($a, $b, $c, #rest) as equivalent of (my $a, my $b, my $c, my #rest) but you can also control scope of your variables like (my $a, our $UGLY_GLOBAL, local $_, #_).
This Regex to be matched:
my ($expect) = ($words=~m/anywhere\s+([^\s]+)\s+/);
^\s+ the word between two spaces
Thanks.
If you want to also take into consideration the punctuation marks, like in:
my $words = "Today i'm not going anywhere; except to office.";
Then try this:
my ($w_after) = ($words =~ /anywhere[[:punct:]|\s]+(\S+)/);
Related
I want to create extract the first two words from a sentence using a Perl function in PostgreSQL. In PostgreSQL, I can do this with:
text = "I am trying to make this work";
Select substring(text from '(^\w+-\w+|^\w+(\s+)?(!|,|\&|'')?(\s+)?\w+)');
It would return "I Am"
I tried to build a Perl function in Postgresql that does the same thing.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION extract_first_two (text)
RETURNS text AS
$$
my $my_text = $_[0];
my $temp;
$pattern = '^\w+-\w+|^\w+(\s+)?(!|,|\&|'')?(\s+)?\w+)';
my $regex = qr/$pattern/;
if ($my_text=~ $regex) {
$temp = $1;
}
return $temp;
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;
But I receive a syntax error near the regular expression. I am not sure what I am doing wrong.
Extracting words is none trivial even in English. Take the following contrived example using Locale::CLDR
use 'Locale::CLDR';
my $locale = Locale::CLDR->new('en');
my #words = $locale->split_words('adf543. 123.25');
#words now contains
adf543
.
123.25
Note that the full stop after adf543 is split into a separate word but the one between 123 and 25 is kept as part of the number 123.25 even though the '.' is the same character
If gets worse when you look at non English languages and much worse when you use non Latin scripts.
You need to precisely define what you think a word is otherwise the following French gets split incorrectly.
Je avais dit «Elle a dit «Il a dit «Ni» il ya trois secondes»»
The parentheses are mismatched in our regex pattern. It has three opening parentheses and four closing ones.
Also, you have two single quotes in the middle of a singly-quoted string, so
'^\w+-\w+|^\w+(\s+)?(!|,|\&|'')?(\s+)?\w+)'
is parsed as two separate strings
'^\w+-\w+|^\w+(\s+)?(!|,|\&|'')?(\s+)?\w+)'
and
'^\w+-\w+|^\w+(\s+)?(!|,|\&|'
')?(\s+)?\w+)'
But I can't suggest how to fix it as I don't understand your intention.
Did you mean a double quote perhaps? In which case (!|,|\&|")? can be written as [!,&"]?
Update
At a rough guess I think you want this
my $regex = qr{ ^ \w++ \s* [-!,&"]* \s* \w+ }x;
$temp = $1 if $my_text=~ /($regex)/;
but I can't be sure. If you describe what you're looking for in English then I can help you better. For instance, it's unclear why you don't have question marks, full stops, and semicolons in the list of intervening punctuation.
I have a question I am hoping someone could help with...
I have a variable that contains the content from a webpage (scraped using WWW::Mechanize).
The variable contains data such as these:
$var = "ewrfs sdfdsf cat_dog,horse,rabbit,chicken-pig"
$var = "fdsf iiukui aawwe dffg elephant,MOUSE_RAT,spider,lion-tiger hdsfds jdlkf sdf"
$var = "dsadp poids pewqwe ANTELOPE-GIRAFFE,frOG,fish,crab,kangaROO-KOALA sdfdsf hkew"
The only bits I am interested in from the above examples are:
#array = ("cat_dog","horse","rabbit","chicken-pig")
#array = ("elephant","MOUSE_RAT","spider","lion-tiger")
#array = ("ANTELOPE-GIRAFFE","frOG","fish","crab","kangaROO-KOALA")
The problem I am having:
I am trying to extract only the comma-separated strings from the variables and then store these in an array for use later on.
But what is the best way to make sure that I get the strings at the start (ie cat_dog) and end (ie chicken-pig) of the comma-separated list of animals as they are not prefixed/suffixed with a comma.
Also, as the variables will contain webpage content, it is inevitable that there may also be instances where a commas is immediately succeeded by a space and then another word, as that is the correct method of using commas in paragraphs and sentences...
For example:
Saturn was long thought to be the only ringed planet, however, this is now known not to be the case.
^ ^
| |
note the spaces here and here
I am not interested in any cases where the comma is followed by a space (as shown above).
I am only interested in cases where the comma DOES NOT have a space after it (ie cat_dog,horse,rabbit,chicken-pig)
I have a tried a number of ways of doing this but cannot work out the best way to go about constructing the regular expression.
How about
[^,\s]+(,[^,\s]+)+
which will match one or more characters that are not a space or comma [^,\s]+ followed by a comma and one or more characters that are not a space or comma, one or more times.
Further to comments
To match more than one sequence add the g modifier for global matching.
The following splits each match $& on a , and pushes the results to #matches.
my $str = "sdfds cat_dog,horse,rabbit,chicken-pig then some more pig,duck,goose";
my #matches;
while ($str =~ /[^,\s]+(,[^,\s]+)+/g) {
push(#matches, split(/,/, $&));
}
print join("\n",#matches),"\n";
Though you can probably construct a single regex, a combination of regexs, splits, grep and map looks decently
my #array = map { split /,/ } grep { !/^,/ && !/,$/ && /,/ } split
Going from right to left:
Split the line on spaces (split)
Leave only elements having no comma at the either end but having one inside (grep)
Split each such element into parts (map and split)
That way you can easily change the parts e.g. to eliminate two consecutive commas add && !/,,/ inside grep.
I hope this is clear and suits your needs:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my #strs = ("ewrfs sdfdsf cat_dog,horse,rabbit,chicken-pig",
"fdsf iiukui aawwe dffg elephant,MOUSE_RAT,spider,lion-tiger hdsfds jdlkf sdf",
"dsadp poids pewqwe ANTELOPE-GIRAFFE,frOG,fish,crab,kangaROO-KOALA sdfdsf hkew",
"Saturn was long thought to be the only ringed planet, however, this is now known not to be the case.",
"Another sentence, although having commas, should not confuse the regex with this: a,b,c,d");
my $regex = qr/
\s #From your examples, it seems as if every
#comma separated list is preceded by a space.
(
(?:
[^,\s]+ #Now, not a comma or a space for the
#terms of the list
, #followed by a comma
)+
[^,\s]+ #followed by one last term of the list
)
/x;
my #matches = map {
$_ =~ /$regex/;
if ($1) {
my $comma_sep_list = $1;
[split ',', $comma_sep_list];
}
else {
[]
}
} #strs;
$var =~ tr/ //s;
while ($var =~ /(?<!, )\b[^, ]+(?=,\S)|(?<=,)[^, ]+(?=,)|(?<=\S,)[^, ]+\b(?! ,)/g) {
push (#arr, $&);
}
the regular expression matches three cases :
(?<!, )\b[^, ]+(?=,\S) : matches cat_dog
(?<=,)[^, ]+(?=,) : matches horse & rabbit
(?<=\S,)[^, ]+\b(?! ,) : matches chicken-pig
I'm trying to learn something about regular expressions.
Here is what I'm going to match:
/parent/child
/parent/child?
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/
/parent/child/?
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789
My expression should "grabs" abc123 and def456.
And now just an example about what I'm not going to match ("question mark" is missing):
/parent/child/firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
Well, I built the following expression:
^(?:/parent/child){1}(?:^(?:/\?|\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?
But that doesn't work.
Could you help me to understand what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE 1
Ok, I made other tests.
I'm trying to fix the previous version with something like this:
/parent/child(?:(?:\?|/\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?$
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] === $_->[1]" for (#params);
say "######next########";
}
else{
#print "there is no params!"
}
}
else{
#say "there is no params!";
}
}
I have the (what I believe to be) negative lookahead assertion <#> *(?!QQQ) that I expect to match if the tested string is a <#> followed by any number of spaces (zero including) and then not followed by QQQ.
Yet, if the tested string is <#> QQQ the regular expression matches.
I fail to see why this is the case and would appreciate any help on this matter.
Here's a test script
use warnings;
use strict;
my #strings = ('something <#> QQQ',
'something <#> RRR',
'something <#>QQQ' ,
'something <#>RRR' );
print "$_\n" for map {$_ . " --> " . rep($_) } (#strings);
sub rep {
my $string = shift;
$string =~ s,<#> *(?!QQQ),at w/o ,;
$string =~ s,<#> *QQQ,at w/ QQQ,;
return $string;
}
This prints
something <#> QQQ --> something at w/o QQQ
something <#> RRR --> something at w/o RRR
something <#>QQQ --> something at w/ QQQ
something <#>RRR --> something at w/o RRR
And I'd have expected the first line to be something <#> QQQ --> something at w/ QQQ.
It matches because zero is included in "any number". So no spaces, followed by a space, matches "any number of spaces not followed by a Q".
You should add another lookahead assertion that the first thing after your spaces is not itself a space. Try this (untested):
<#> *(?!QQQ)(?! )
ETA Side note: changing the quantifier to + would have helped only when there's exactly one space; in the general case, the regex can always grab one less space and therefore succeed. Regexes want to match, and will bend over backwards to do so in any way possible. All other considerations (leftmost, longest, etc) take a back seat - if it can match more than one way, they determine which way is chosen. But matching always wins over not matching.
$string =~ s,<#> *(?!QQQ),at w/o ,;
$string =~ s,<#> *QQQ,at w/ QQQ,;
One problem of yours here is that you are viewing the two regexes separately. You first ask to replace the string without QQQ, and then to replace the string with QQQ. This is actually checking the same thing twice, in a sense. For example: if (X==0) { ... } elsif (X!=0) { ... }. In other words, the code may be better written:
unless ($string =~ s,<#> *QQQ,at w/ QQQ,) {
$string =~ s,<#> *,at w/o,;
}
You always have to be careful with the * quantifier. Since it matches zero or more times, it can also match the empty string, which basically means: it can match any place in any string.
A negative look-around assertion has a similar quality, in the sense that it needs to only find a single thing that differs in order to match. In this case, it matches the part "<#> " as <#> + no space + space, where space is of course "not" QQQ. You are more or less at a logical impasse here, because the * quantifier and the negative look-ahead counter each other.
I believe the correct way to solve this is to separate the regexes, like I showed above. There is no sense in allowing the possibility of both regexes being executed.
However, for theoretical purposes, a working regex that allows both any number of spaces, and a negative look-ahead would need to be anchored. Much like Mark Reed has shown. This one might be the simplest.
<#>(?! *QQQ) # Add the spaces to the look-ahead
The difference is that now the spaces and Qs are anchored to each other, whereas before they could match separately. To drive home the point of the * quantifier, and also solve a minor problem of removing additional spaces, you can use:
<#> *(?! *QQQ)
This will work because either of the quantifiers can match the empty string. Theoretically, you can add as many of these as you want, and it will make no difference (except in performance): / * * * * * * */ is functionally equivalent to / */. The difference here is that spaces combined with Qs may not exist.
The regex engine will backtrack until it finds a match, or until finding a match is impossible. In this case, it found the following match:
+--------------- Matches "<#>".
| +----------- Matches "" (empty string).
| | +--- Doesn't match " QQQ".
| | |
--- ---- ---
'something <#> QQQ' =~ /<#> [ ]* (?!QQQ)/x
All you need to do is shuffle things around. Replace
/<#>[ ]*(?!QQQ)/
with
/<#>(?![ ]*QQQ)/
Or you can make it so the regex will only match all the spaces:
/<#>[ ]*+(?!QQQ)/
/<#>[ ]*(?![ ]|QQQ)/
/<#>[ ]*(?![ ])(?!QQQ)/
PS — Spaces are hard to see, so I use [ ] to make them more visible. It gets optimised away anyway.
I am looking for a regex that will find repeating letters. So any letter twice or more, for example:
booooooot or abbott
I won't know the letter I am looking for ahead of time.
This is a question I was asked in interviews and then asked in interviews. Not so many people get it correct.
You can find any letter, then use \1 to find that same letter a second time (or more). If you only need to know the letter, then $1 will contain it. Otherwise you can concatenate the second match onto the first.
my $str = "Foooooobar";
$str =~ /(\w)(\1+)/;
print $1;
# prints 'o'
print $1 . $2;
# prints 'oooooo'
I think you actually want this rather than the "\w" as that includes numbers and the underscore.
([a-zA-Z])\1+
Ok, ok, I can take a hint Leon. Use this for the unicode-world or for posix stuff.
([[:alpha:]])\1+
I Think using a backreference would work:
(\w)\1+
\w is basically [a-zA-Z_0-9] so if you only want to match letters between A and Z (case insensitively), use [a-zA-Z] instead.
(EDIT: or, like Tanktalus mentioned in his comment (and as others have answered as well), [[:alpha:]], which is locale-sensitive)
Use \N to refer to previous groups:
/(\w)\1+/g
You might want to take care as to what is considered to be a letter, and this depends on your locale. Using ISO Latin-1 will allow accented Western language characters to be matched as letters. In the following program, the default locale doesn't recognise é, and thus créé fails to match. Uncomment the locale setting code, and then it begins to match.
Also note that \w includes digits and the underscore character along with all the letters. To get just the letters, you need to take the complement of the non-alphanum, digits and underscore characters. This leaves only letters.
That might be easier to understand by framing it as the question:
"What regular expression matches any digit except 3?"
The answer is:
/[^\D3]/
#! /usr/local/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# uncomment the following three lines:
# use locale;
# use POSIX;
# setlocale(LC_CTYPE, 'fr_FR.ISO8859-1');
while (<DATA>) {
chomp;
if (/([^\W_0-9])\1+/) {
print "$_: dup [$1]\n";
}
else {
print "$_: nope\n";
}
}
__DATA__
100
food
créé
a::b
The following code will return all the characters, that repeat two or more times:
my $str = "SSSannnkaaarsss";
print $str =~ /(\w)\1+/g;
Just for kicks, a completely different approach:
if ( ($str ^ substr($str,1) ) =~ /\0+/ ) {
print "found ", substr($str, $-[0], $+[0]-$-[0]+1), " at offset ", $-[0];
}
FYI, aside from RegExBuddy, a real handy free site for testing regular expressions is RegExr at gskinner.com. Handles ([[:alpha:]])(\1+) nicely.
How about:
(\w)\1+
The first part makes an unnamed group around a character, then the back-reference looks for that same character.
I think this should also work:
((\w)(?=\2))+\2
/(.)\\1{2,}+/u
'u' modifier matching with unicode