I have this regular expression:
\b[A-Z]{1}[A-Z]{0,7}[0-9]?\b|\b[0-9]{2,3}\b
The desired output is as highlighted:
JOHN went to LONDON one fine day.
JOHN had lunch in a PUB.
JOHN then moved to CHICAGO.
I don't want JOHN to be highlighted.
John does not want this to match the pattern.
Neither this.
But THIS1 should match the pattern.
Also the other 70 times that the pattern should match.
Observed output:
JOHN went to LONDON one fine day.
JOHN had lunch in a PUB.
JOHN then moved to CHICAGO.
I don't want JOHN to be highlighted.
John does not want this to match the pattern.
Neither this.
But THIS1 should match the pattern.
Also the other 70 times that the pattern should match.
The regex works partly but I don't want two constant strings- JOHN and I to match as part of this regex. Please help.
You can use a negative lookahead to exclude those matches. Also, your pattern seems rather "redundant", you may shorten it considerably using grouping and removing unnecessary subpatterns:
\b(?!(?:JOHN|I)\b)(?:[A-Z]{1,8}[0-9]?|[0-9]{2,3})\b
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
See the regex demo
The (?!(?:JOHN|I)\b) is the negative lookahead that fails the match if the word matched is equal to I or JOHN.
Note that {1} can always be omitted as any unquantified pattern is matched once. [A-Z]{1}[A-Z]{0,7} is actually equal to [A-Z]{1,8}.
Pattern details:
\b - word boundary
(?!(?:JOHN|I)\b) - the word matched cannot be equal to JOHN or I
(?:[A-Z]{1,8}[0-9]?|[0-9]{2,3}) - one of the two alternatives:
[A-Z]{1,8}[0-9]? - 1 to 8 uppercase ASCII letters followed with an optional (1 or 0) digit
| - or
[0-9]{2,3} - 2 to 3 digits
\b - trailing word boundary
Related
I need to match a specific pattern but I'm unable to do it with regular expressions. I'm looking for people's name. It follows always the same patterns. Some combinations are:
Mr. Snow
Mr. John Snow
Mr. John Snow (Winterfall of the nord lands)
My problem comes when sometimes I have things like: Mr. Snow and Ms. Stark. It captures also the and. So I'm looking for a regular expression that does not capture the second name only if it is and. Here I'm looking for ["Mr. Snow", "Ms. Stark"].
My best try is as follows:
(M[rs].\s\w+(?:\s[\w-]+)(?:\s\([^\)]*\))?).
Note that the second name is in a non-capturing group. Because I was thinking to use a negative look-ahead, but If I do that, the first word is not captured (because the entire name does not match), and I need that to be captured.
Any Ideas?
Here is some text to fast check.
Here is my two cents:
\bM[rs]\.\h(\p{Lu}\p{Ll}+(?:[\h-]\p{Lu}\p{Ll}+)*)\b
See an online demo
\b - A word-boundary;
M[rs]\.\h - Match Mr. or Ms. followed by a horizontal whitespace;
(\p{Lu}\p{Ll}+(?:[\h-]\p{Lu}\p{Ll}+)*) - A capture group with a nested non-capture group to match an uppercase letter followed by lowercase letters and 0+ 2nd names concatenated through whitespace or hyphen;
\b - A word-boundary.
As it is a name of a person you could also check that the first letters of the words be uppercases.
M[rs].\s[A-Z]\w+(?:\s[A-Z]\w+(?:\s\([^\)]*\))?)?
See the regex demo
Matching names is difficult, see this page for a nice article:
Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.
For the examples that you have given, you might use:
\bM[rs]\.(?: (?!M[rs]\.|and )\w+)*
Explanation
\b A word boundary
M[rs]\. Match either Mr or Ms followed by a dot (note to escape it)
(?: Non capture group
Match a space (Or \s+ if you want want to allow newlines)
(?!M[rs]\.|and ) Negative lookahead, assert that from the current position there is not Mr or Ms or and directly to the right
\w+ Match 1+ word characters
)* Close the non capture group and optionally repeat it
Regex demo
This captures the first name in group 1 and the second in group 2if the second name exists and is not and:
(?<=M[rs]\. )(\w+)(?: (?!and)(\w+))?
See live demo.
If you want to capture the title as group 1 and the names as groups 2 and 3, change the look behind to a capture group:
(M[rs]\.) (\w+)(?: (?!and)(\w+))?
I am working on an assignment for class, and we need to format this data. I was thinking that regular expressions would be a very elegant way of formatting the data. But, I ran into some trouble. This is my first time doing this before and I do not know how to properly split the data. I want the beginning to the first digit be the first section, the first digit until the next white space to be the second section, and there till the end of the line to be the third section. Here is my data:
Amber-Rose Bowen 53 123 Machinery Rd.
Joyce Kirkland 19 234 Cylinder Dr.
Seb Dotson 32 3456 Surgery Ln.
Dominique Hough 58 654 Election Rd.
Yasemin Mcleod 29 555 Cabinet Ave.
Nancy Lord 80 232 Highway Rd.
Tracy Mckenzie 72 101 Device Ave.
Alistair Salter 25 109 Guitar Ln.
Adeel Sears 42 222 Solitare Rd.
I have been using https://regex101.com/ to test my ideas. ([a-zA-Z]+)([0-9]+) this is my start, but I do not know how to go from the start to the first digit. (or any other part of this)
You can use
^(.*?)[^\S\r\n]+(\d+)[^\S\r\n]+(\S.*)
See the regex demo. This regex can also be used with a multiline flag to extract data from a multiline string.
Details:
^ - start of string
(.*?) - Group 1: any zero or more chars other than line break chars as few as possible
[^\S\r\n]+ - zero or more horizontal whitespaces (in some regex flavors, you can use \h+ or [^\p{Zs}\t]+ instead)
(\d+) - Group 2: one or more digits
[^\S\r\n]+ - one or more horizontal whitespaces
(\S.*) - Group 3: a non-whitespace char and then the rest of the line.
If you merely wish to separate the string into full name, age and street address you may split the string on matches of the regular expression
(?i)(?<=[a-z]|\d) +(?=\d)
For example:
Amber-Rose Bowen 53 123 Machinery Rd.
^ ^^^^
Demo
The regular expression reads: "match one or more spaces preceded by a letter or digit and followed by a digit". (?i) causes the match of a letter to be case-indifferent. (?<=[a-z]|\d) is a positive lookbehind; (?=\d) is a positive lookahead.
You may use the following regular expression if you wish to to extract first name, last name, age, street number and street name.
^(?<first_name>\S+) +(?<last_name>\S+) +(?<age>\d+) +(?<street_nbr>\d+) +(?<stret_name>.*)
For example:
Amber-Rose Bowen 53 123 Machinery Rd.
^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1 2 3 4 5
1: first_name
2: last_name
3: age
4: street_nbr
5: street_name
Demo
I've used the PCRE regex engine with named capture groups. The expression would be similar for other regex engines, though some do not support named groups, in which case you would have to use numbered groups (group 1, group 2, and so forth.)
Note that this only works because of the consistent structure of your data. In real life some strings may contain such things as middle names or apartment numbers, which would complicate the parsing of the strings.
I have these kind of strings:
WILLIAM SMITH 2345 GLENDALE DR RM 245 ATLANTA GA 30328-3474
LINDSAY SCARPITTA 655 W GRACE ST APT 418 CHICAGO IL 60613-4046
I want to make sure that strings I will get are like those strings like above.
Here's my regular expression:
[A-Z]+ [A-Z]+ [0-9]{3,4} [A-Z]+ [A-Z]{2,4} [A-Z]{2,4} [0-9]+ [A-Z]+ [A-Z]{2} [0-9]{5}-[0-9]{4}$
But my regular expression only matches the first example and does not match the second one.
Here's dawg's regex with capturing groups:
^([A-Z]+[ \t]+[A-Z]+)[ \t]+(\d+)[ \t](.*)[ \t]+([A-Z]{2})[ \t]+(\d{5}(?:-\d{4}))$
Here's the url.
UPDATE
sorry, I forgot to remove non-capturing group at the end of dawg's regex...
Here's new regex without non-capturing group: regex101
Try this:
^[A-Z]+[ \t]+[A-Z]+[ \t]+\d+.*[ \t]+[A-Z]{2}[ \t]+\d{5}(?:-\d{4})$
Demo
Explanation:
1. ^[A-Z]+[ \t]+[A-Z]+[ \t]+ Starting at the start of line,
two blocks of A-Z for the name
(however, names are often more complicated...)
2. \d+.*[ \t]+[A-Z]{2}[ \t]+ Using number start and
two letter state code at the end for the full address
Cities can have spaces such as 'Miami Beach'
3. \d{5}(?:-\d{4})$ Zip code with optional -NNNN with end anchor
Sample text
5950 S Willow Dr Ste 304
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
P (123) 456-7890
F (123) 456-7890
Get Directions
Tried the following but it grabbed the first line of the address as well
(.*)(?=(\n.*){2}$)
Also tried
P\s(\(\d{3})\)\s\d+-\d+
but it doesn't work in WebHarvy even though it works on RegexStorm
Looking for an expression to match the phone and fax numbers from it. I would be using the expression in WebHarvy
https://www.webharvy.com/articles/regex.html
Thanks
Your second pattern is almost what you need to do. With P\s(\(\d{3})\)\s\d+-\d+, you captured into Group 1 only (\(\d{3}) part, while you need to capture the whole number.
I also suggest to restrict the context: either match P as a whole word, or as the first word on a line:
\bP\s*(\(\d{3}\)\s*\d+-\d+)
or
(?m)^\s*P\s*(\(\d{3}\)\s*\d+-\d+)
See the regex demo, and here is what you need to pay attention to there:
The \b part matches a word boundary (\b) and (?m)^\s* matches the start of a line ((?m) makes ^ match the start of a line) and then \s* matches 0+ whitespaces. You may change it to only match horizontal whitespaces by replacing the pattern with [\p{Zs}\t]*.
Looking for an expression to extract City Names from addresses. Trying to use this expression in WebHarvy which uses the .NET flavor of regex
Example address
1234 Savoy Dr Ste 123
New Houston, TX 77036-3320
or
1234 Savoy Dr Ste 510
Texas, TX 77036-3320
So the city name could be single or two words.
The expression I am trying is
(\w|\w\s\w)+(?=,\s\w{2})
When I am trying this on RegexStorm it seems to be working fine, but when I am using this in WebHarvy, it only captures the 'n' from the city name New Houston and 'n' from Austin
Where am I going wrong?
In WebHarvey, if a regex contains a capturing group, its contents are returned. Thus, you do not need a lookahead.
Another point is that you need to match 1 or more word chars, optionally followed with a chunk of whitespaces followed with 1 or more word chars. Your regex contains a repeated capturing group whose contents are re-written upon each iteration and after it finds matching, Group 1 only contains n:
Use
(\w+(?:[^\S\r\n]+\w+)?),\s\w{2})
See the regex demo here
The [^\S\r\n]+ part matches any whitespace except CR and LF. You may use [\p{Zs}\t]+ to match any 1+ horizontal whitespaces.