c++ regex search pattern not found - c++

Following the example here I wrote following code:
using namespace std::regex_constants;
std::string str("{trol,asdfsad},{safsa, aaaaa,aaaaadfs}");
std::smatch m;
std::regex r("\\{(.*)\\}"); // matches anything between {}
std::cout << "Initiating search..." << std::endl;
while (std::regex_search(str, m, r)) {
for (auto x : m) {
std::cout << x << " ";
}
std::cout << std::endl;
str = m.suffix().str();
}
But to my surprise, it doesn't find anything at all which I fail to understand. I would understand if the regex matches whole string since .* is greedy but nothing at all? What am I doing wrong here?
To be clear - I know that regexes are not suitable for Parsing BUT I won't deal with more levels of bracket nesting and therefore I find usage of regexes good enough.

If you want to use basic posix syntax, your regex should be
{\\(.*\\)}
If you want to use default ECMAScript, your regex should be
\\{(.*)\\}
with clang and libc++ or with gcc 4.9+ (since only it fully support regex) your code give:
Initiating search...
{trol,asdfsad},{safsa, aaaaa,aaaaadfs} trol,asdfsad},{safsa, aaaaa,aaaaadfs
Live example on coliru

Eventually it turned out to really be problem with gcc version so I finally got it working using boost::regex library and following code:
std::string str("{trol,asdfsad},{safsa,aaaaa,aaaaadfs}");
boost::regex rex("\\{(.*?)\\}", boost::regex_constants::perl);
boost::smatch result;
while (boost::regex_search(str, result, rex)) {
for (uint i = 0; i < result.size(); ++i) {
std::cout << result[i] << " ";
}
std::cout << std::endl;
str = result.suffix().str();
}

Related

PCRE does not match

I suppose it's something very stupid, however this does not match, and I have no idea why.
I compiles successfully and everything, but it just doesn't match.
I've already used RE(".*") but it doesn't work as well.
The system is OS X (installed pcre using brew).
std::string s;
if (pcrecpp::RE("h.*o").FullMatch("hello", &s))
{
std::cout << "Successful match " << s << std::endl;
}
You are trying to extract one subpattern (in &s), but have not included any parentheses to capture that subpattern. Try this (untested, note parentheses).
std::string s;
if (pcrecpp::RE("(h.*o)").FullMatch("hello", &s))
{
std::cout << "Successful match " << s << std::endl;
}
The documentation at http://www.pcre.org/original/doc/html/pcrecpp.html has a similar example, stating:
Example: fails because there aren't enough sub-patterns:
!pcrecpp::RE("\w+:\d+").FullMatch("ruby:1234", &s);

regex_match giving unexpected results

I'm trying to write a recursive descent parser and am trying to search a match a regex within a string inputted by the user. I am trying to do the following to try to understand the <regex> library offered by C++11, but I'm getting unexpected results.
std::string expression = "2+2+2";
std::regex re("[-+*/()]");
std::smatch m;
std::cout << "My expression is " << expression << std::endl;
if(std::regex_search(expression, re)) {
std::cout << "Found a match!" << std::endl;
}
std::regex_match(expression, m, re);
std::cout << "matches:" << std::endl;
for (auto it = m.begin(); it!=m.end(); ++it) {
std::cout << *it << std::endl;
}
So based on my regular expression, I expect it to output
Found a match!
matches:
+
+
However, the output I get is:
My expression is 2+2+2
Found a match!
matches:
I feel like I'm making a stupid mistake, but I can't seem to figure out why there's a discrepancy between the outputs.
Thanks,
erip
You've got a few issues. First, let's look at some working code:
#include <regex>
#include <iostream>
int main() {
std::string expr = "2+2+2";
std::regex re("[+\\-*/()]");
const auto operators_begin = std::sregex_iterator(expr.begin(), expr.end(), re);
const auto operators_end = std::sregex_iterator();
std::cout << "Count: " << std::distance(operators_begin, operators_end) << "\n";
for (auto i = operators_begin; i != operators_end; ++i) {
std::smatch match = *i;
std::cout << match.str() << "\n";
}
}
Output:
Count: 2
+
+
Issues with your code:
regex_match() returns false.
You don't have any capturing groups in the regular expression. So even if regex_match() returned true, it wouldn't capture anything.
The number of captures in a regex_match can be determined strictly by looking at the regular expression. So my re will capture exactly one group.
But we want to apply this regular expression on our string multiple times, because we want to find all of the matches. The tool for that is regex_iterator.
We also needed to escape the - in the regular expression. The minus has a special meaning within character classes.
I found the regex_iterator, which solved the problem. Here's the working code:
std::regex re("[-+*/()]");
std::smatch m;
std::cout << "My expression is " << expression << std::endl;
if(std::regex_search(expression, re)) {
std::cout << "Found a match!" << std::endl;
}
try {
std::sregex_iterator next(expression.begin(), expression.end(), re);
std::sregex_iterator end;
while (next != end) {
std::smatch match = *next;
std::cout << match.str() << "\n";
next++;
}
} catch (std::regex_error& e) {
// Syntax error in the regular expression
}

Extracting links from a html-file with c++ regex

I am trying to extract links from a wegpage using this regular expression:
std::regex e("<a\s[^>]*href=(\"??)([^\" >]*?)\\1[^>]*>(.*)<\/a>");
but sadly my programm exits with the what<>: regex_error.
Is there a way without using third party libraries or do I have to use something like boost here?
Update:
I edit in my regex code, that is pretty much taken from the regex-example of cplusplus.com
std::regex e("<a\s[^>]*href=(\"??)([^\" >]*?)\\1[^>]*>(.*)<\/a>");
std::smatch m;
std::cout << "The following links were found:" << std::endl;
std::string s = getCodeFromSite("cplusplus.com"); //provides me with the hmtl code as a string
while (std::regex_search (s,m,e)) {
for (auto x:m) std::cout << x << " ";
std::cout << std::endl;
s = m.suffix().str();
}

Regex C++: extract substring

I would like to extract a substring between two others.
ex: /home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT
or just FILE_othersymbol_EVENT.DAT
And I would like to get : mysymbol and othersymbol
I don't want to use boost or other libs. Just standard stuffs from C++, except CERN's ROOT lib, with TRegexp, but I don't know how to use it...
Since last year C++ has regular expression built into the standard. This program will show how to use them to extract the string you are after:
#include <regex>
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
const std::string s = "/home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT";
std::regex rgx(".*FILE_(\\w+)_EVENT\\.DAT.*");
std::smatch match;
if (std::regex_search(s.begin(), s.end(), match, rgx))
std::cout << "match: " << match[1] << '\n';
}
It will output:
match: mysymbol
It should be noted though, that it will not work in GCC as its library support for regular expression is not very good. Works well in VS2010 (and probably VS2012), and should work in clang.
By now (late 2016) all modern C++ compilers and their standard libraries are fully up to date with the C++11 standard, and most if not all of C++14 as well. GCC 6 and the upcoming Clang 4 support most of the coming C++17 standard as well.
TRegexp only supports a very limited subset of regular expressions compared to other regex flavors. This makes constructing a single regex that suits your needs somewhat awkward.
One possible solution:
[^_]*_([^_]*)_
will match the string until the first underscore, then capture all characters until the next underscore. The relevant result of the match is then found in group number 1.
But in your case, why use a regex at all? Just find the first and second occurrence of your delimiter _ in the string and extract the characters between those positions.
If you want to use regular expressions, I'd really recommend using C++11's regexes or, if you have a compiler that doesn't yet support them, Boost. Boost is something I consider almost-part-of-standard-C++.
But for this particular question, you do not really need any form of regular expressions. Something like this sketch should work just fine, after you add all appropriate error checks (beg != npos, end != npos etc.), test code, and remove my typos:
std::string between(std::string const &in,
std::string const &before, std::string const &after) {
size_type beg = in.find(before);
beg += before.size();
size_type end = in.find(after, beg);
return in.substr(beg, end-beg);
}
Obviously, you could change the std::string to a template parameter and it should work just fine with std::wstring or more seldomly used instantiations of std::basic_string as well.
I would study corner cases before trusting it.
But This is a good candidate:
std::string text = "/home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT";
std::regex reg("(.*)(FILE_)(.*)(_EVENT.DAT)(.*)");
std::cout << std::regex_replace(text, reg, "$3") << '\n';
The answers of Some programmer dude, Tim Pietzcker, and Christopher Creutzig are cool and correct, but they seemed to me not very obvious for beginners.
The following function is an attempt to create an auxiliary illustration for Some programmer dude and Tim Pietzcker's answers:
void ExtractSubString(const std::string& start_string
, const std::string& string_regex_extract_substring_template)
{
std::regex regex_extract_substring_template(
string_regex_extract_substring_template);
std::smatch match;
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "A substring extract template: " << std::endl;
std::cout << std::quoted(string_regex_extract_substring_template)
<< std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "Start string: " << std::endl;
std::cout << start_string << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
if (std::regex_search(start_string.begin(), start_string.end()
, match, regex_extract_substring_template))
{
std::cout << "match0: " << match[0] << std::endl;
std::cout << "match1: " << match[1] << std::endl;
std::cout << "match2: " << match[2] << std::endl;
}
std::cout << std::endl;
}
The following overloaded function is an attempt to help illustrate Christopher Creutzig's answer:
void ExtractSubString(const std::string& start_string
, const std::string& before_substring, const std::string& after_substring)
{
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "A before substring: " << std::endl;
std::cout << std::quoted(before_substring) << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "An after substring: " << std::endl;
std::cout << std::quoted(after_substring) << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "Start string: " << std::endl;
std::cout << start_string << std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
size_t before_substring_begin
= start_string.find(before_substring);
size_t extract_substring_begin
= before_substring_begin + before_substring.size();
size_t extract_substring_end
= start_string.find(after_substring, extract_substring_begin);
std::cout << "Extract substring: " << std::endl;
std::cout
<< start_string.substr(extract_substring_begin
, extract_substring_end - extract_substring_begin)
<< std::endl;
std::cout << std::endl;
}
This is the main function to run the overloaded functions:
#include <regex>
#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
int main()
{
const std::string start_string
= "/home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT";
const std::string string_regex_extract_substring_template(
".*FILE_(\\w+)_EVENT\\.DAT.*");
const std::string string_regex_extract_substring_template2(
"[^_]*_([^_]*)_");
ExtractSubString(start_string, string_regex_extract_substring_template);
ExtractSubString(start_string, string_regex_extract_substring_template2);
const std::string before_substring = "/home/toto/FILE_";
const std::string after_substring = "_EVENT.DAT";
ExtractSubString(start_string, before_substring, after_substring);
}
This is the result of executing the main function:
A substring extract template:
".*FILE_(\\w+)_EVENT\\.DAT.*"
Start string:
"/home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT"
match0: /home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT
match1: mysymbol
match2:
A substring extract template:
"[^_]*_([^_]*)_"
Start string:
"/home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT"
match0: /home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_
match1: mysymbol
match2:
A before substring:
"/home/toto/FILE_"
An after substring:
"_EVENT.DAT"
Start string:
"/home/toto/FILE_mysymbol_EVENT.DAT"
Extract substring:
mysymbol

Regular Expressions misunderstanding or just broken implementation?

I tried a very simple use of regex_search and can not understand why I do not get a match:
Alas, the gcc-C++0x-implementations 4.5 does not seem to be working, I get a link error here.
But here is my gcc-4.7.0 try, quite straightforward:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <regex>
using namespace std;
int main () {
regex rxWorld("world");
const string text = "hello world!";
const auto t0 = text.cbegin();
smatch match;
const bool ok = regex_search(text, match, rxWorld);
/* ... */
}
I think I should get ok==true and something in match as well. I reduced the example to a very simple regex for this. I tried slightly more complicated first.
But by printing code at /* ... */ says otherwise:
cout << " text:'" << text
<< "' ok:" << ok
<< " size:" << match.size();
cout << " pos:" << match.position()
<< " len:"<< match.length();
for(const auto& sub : match) {
cout << " ["<<(sub.first-t0)<<".."<<(sub.second-t0)
<< ":"<<sub.matched
<< "'"<<sub.str()
<< "']";
}
cout << endl;
The output is:
$ ./regex-search-01.x
text:'hello world!' ok:0 size:0 pos:-1 len:0
Update: I also tried regex_search(t0, text.cend(), match, rxWorld) and const char* text, no change.
`
Is my understanding of regex_search wrong? I am completely baffled. Or is it just the gcc?
As you can see from the C++-0x status of libstdc++ the regex support is incomplete.
In particular match_results are not finished. Iterators are not even started.
Volunteers are welcome ;-)
[EDIT] [As of gcc-4.9]2 will be fully supported.