How to find the largest repeating string with overlap in a line - regex

I have a series of lines such as
my $string = "home test results results-apr-25 results-apr-251.csv";
#str = $string =~ /(\w+)\1+/i;
print "#str";
How do I find the largest repeating string with overlap which are separated by whitespace?
In this case I'm looking for the output :
results-apr-25

It looks like you need the String::LCSS_XS which calculates Longest Common SubStrings. Don't try it's Perl-only twin brother String::LCSS because there are bugs in that one.
use strict;
use warnings;
use String::LCSS_XS;
*lcss = \&String::LCSS_XS::lcss; # Manual import of `lcss`
my $var = 'home test results results-apr-25 results-apr-251.csv';
my #words = split ' ', $var;
my $longest;
my ($first, $second);
for my $i (0 .. $#words) {
for my $j ($i + 1 .. $#words) {
my $lcss = lcss(#words[$i,$j]);
unless ($longest and length $lcss <= length $longest) {
$longest = $lcss;
($first, $second) = #words[$i,$j];
}
}
}
printf qq{Longest common substring is "%s" between "%s" and "%s"\n}, $longest, $first, $second;
output
Longest common substring is "results-apr-25" between "results-apr-25" and "results-apr-251.csv"

my $var = "home test results results-apr-25 results-apr-251.csv";
my #str = split " ", $var;
my %h;
my $last = pop #str;
while (my $curr = pop #str ) {
if(($curr =~/^$last/) || $last=~/^$curr/) {
$h{length($curr)}= $curr ;
}
$last = $curr;
}
my $max_key = max(keys %h);
print $h{$max_key},"\n";

If you want to make it without a loop, you will need the /g regex modifier.
This will get you all the repeating string:
my #str = $string =~ /(\S+)(?=\s\1)/ig;
I have replaced \w with \S (in your example, \w doesn't match -), and used a look-ahead: (?=\s\1) means match something that is before \s\1, without matching \s\1 itself—this is required to make sure that the next match attempt starts after the first string, not after the second.
Then, it is simply a matter of extracting the longest string from #str:
my $longest = (sort { length $b <=> length $a } #str)[0];
(Do note that this is a legible but far from being the most efficient way of finding the longest value, but this is the subject of a different question.)

How about:
my $var = "home test results results-apr-25 results-apr-251.csv";
my $l = length $var;
for (my $i=int($l/2); $i; $i--) {
if ($var =~ /(\S{$i}).*\1/) {
say "found: $1";
last;
}
}
output:
found: results-apr-25

Related

Regex to find and display count of every word in a string [duplicate]

i need to implement a program to count the occurrence of a substring in a string in perl. i have implemented it as follows
sub countnmstr
{
$count =0;
$count++ while $_[0] =~ /$_[1]/g;
return $count;
}
$count = countnmstr("aaa","aa");
print "$count\n";
now this is what i would normally do. however, in the implementation above i want to count occurrence of 'aa' in 'aaa'. here i get answer as 1 which seems reasonable but i need to consider the overlapping cases as well. hence the above case should give an answer as 2 since there are two 'aa's if we consider overlap.
can anyone suggest how to implement such a function??
Everyone is getting pretty complicated in their answers (d'oh! daotoad should have made his comment an answer!), perhaps because they are afraid of the goatse operator. I didn't name it, that's just what people call it. It uses the trick that the result of a list assignment is the number of elements in the righthand list.
The Perl idiom for counting matches is then:
my $count = () = $_[0] =~ /($pattern)/g;
The goatse part is the = () =, which is an empty list in the middle of two assignments. The lefthand part of the goatse gets the count from the righthand side of the goatse. Note the you need a capture in the pattern because that's the list the match operator will return in list context.
Now, the next trick in your case is that you really want a positive lookbehind (or lookahead maybe). The lookarounds don't consume characters, so you don't need to keep track of the position:
my $count = () = 'aaa' =~ /((?<=a)a)/g;
Your aaa is just an example. If you have a variable-width pattern, you have to use a lookahead. Lookbehinds in Perl have to be fixed width.
See ysth's answer ... I failed to realize that the pattern could consist solely of a zero width assertion and still work for this purpose.
You can use positive lookahead as suggested by others, and write the function as:
sub countnmstr {
my ($haystack, $needle) = #_;
my ($first, $rest) = $needle =~ /^(.)(.*)$/;
return scalar (() = $haystack =~ /(\Q$first\E(?=\Q$rest\E))/g);
}
You can also use pos to adjust where the next search picks up from:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;
sub countnmstr {
my ($haystack, $needle) = #_;
my $adj = length($needle) - 1;
die "Search string cannot be empty!" if $adj < 0;
my $count = 0;
while ( $haystack =~ /\Q$needle/g ) {
pos $haystack -= $adj;
$count += 1;
}
return $count;
}
print countnmstr("aaa","aa"), "\n";
Output:
C:\Temp> t
2
sub countnmstr
{
my ($string, $substr) = #_;
return scalar( () = $string =~ /(?=\Q$substr\E)/g );
}
$count = countnmstr("aaa","aa");
print "$count\n";
A few points:
//g in list context matches as many times as possible.
\Q...\E is used to auto-escape any meta characters, so that you are doing a substring count, not a subpattern count.
Using a lookahead (?= ... ) causes each match to not "consume" any of the string, allowing the following match to be attempted at the very next character.
This uses the same feature where a list assignment (in this case, to an empty list) in scalar context returns the count of elements on the right of the list assignment as the goatse/flying-lentil/spread-eagle/whatever operator, but uses scalar() instead of a scalar assignment to provide the scalar context.
$_[0] is not used directly, but instead copied to a lexical; a naive use of $_[0] in place of $string would cause the //g to start partway through the string instead of at the beginning if the passed string had a stored pos().
Update: s///g is faster, though not as fast as using index:
sub countnmstr
{
my ($string, $substr) = #_;
return scalar( $string =~ s/(?=\Q$substr\E)//g );
}
You could use a lookahead assertion in the regular expression:
sub countnmstr {
my #matches = $_[0] =~ /(?=($_[1]))/g;
return scalar #matches;
}
I suspect Sinan's suggestion will be quicker though.
you can try this, no more regex than needed.
$haystack="aaaaabbbcc";
$needle = "aa";
while ( 1 ){
$ind = index($haystack,$needle);
if ( $ind == -1 ) {last};
$haystack = substr($haystack,$ind+1);
$count++;
}
print "Total count: $count\n";
output
$ ./perl.pl
Total count: 4
If speed is an issue, the index approach suggested by ghostdog74 (with cjm's improvement) is likely to be considerably faster than the regex solutions.
use strict;
use warnings;
sub countnmstr_regex {
my ($haystack, $needle) = #_;
return scalar( () = $haystack =~ /(?=\Q$needle\E)/g );
}
sub countnmstr_index {
my ($haystack, $needle) = #_;
my $i = 0;
my $tally = 0;
while (1){
$i = index($haystack, $needle, $i);
last if $i == -1;
$tally ++;
$i ++;
}
return $tally;
}
use Benchmark qw(cmpthese);
my $size = 1;
my $h = 'aaa aaaaaa' x $size;
my $n = 'aa';
cmpthese( -2, {
countnmstr_regex => sub { countnmstr_regex($h, $n) },
countnmstr_index => sub { countnmstr_index($h, $n) },
} );
__END__
# Benchmarks run on Windows.
# Result using a small haystack ($size = 1).
Rate countnmstr_regex countnmstr_index
countnmstr_regex 93701/s -- -66%
countnmstr_index 271893/s 190% --
# Result using a large haystack ($size = 100).
Rate countnmstr_regex countnmstr_index
countnmstr_regex 929/s -- -81%
countnmstr_index 4960/s 434% --

How to print and get index of two regex match in perl?

How can I print and get index from regex here:
my $search1 = "aaaNAMEaaaa";
my $search2 = "bbbbCHECKbbb";
if ( $search1 =~ /na\we/i and $search2 =~ /che\wk/i ) {
print "String found\n";
# This works with one search
# my $matched = $&;
# my $pos = index( $search1, $matched );
}
If both expressions match, $& will only have the last match. i.e. for the example above $& will always have the value CHECK and never have NAME because it was overwritten by the second pattern match.
You can wrap this logic in a function, then call that function as many times as you'd like with different string, pattern combinations:
use strict;
use warnings;
my $search1 = "aaaNAMEaaaa";
my $search2 = "bbbbCHECKbbb";
print index_from_match($search1, qr/na\we/i), "\n"; # 3
print index_from_match($search2, qr/che\wk/i), "\n"; # 4
print index_from_match($search1, qr/che\wk/i), "\n"; # -1
sub index_from_match {
my ($s, $pattern) = #_;
# uses a capture group instead of $&
if ( my ($match) = $s =~ m/($pattern)/ ) {
return index($s, $match);
}
return -1;
}
The core problem is that you're doing two regex comparisons in a single expression, so the values for the first one are lost before they can be processed
It's really hard to see how to help you without understanding the program flow within the conditional statement and how you actually use those values
Other languages use the idea of a match object, and it's easy to simulate that here by writing a subroutine that returns either a [ string, offset ] pair if the pattern matched, or undef if not. It's also less wasteful to use the built-in #- and #+ arrays to provide the values needed instead of repeating the search with index
It would look like this
use strict;
use warnings 'all';
use Carp 'croak';
my $search1 = 'aaaNAMEaaaa';
my $search2 = 'bbbbCHECKbbb';
my $match1 = match($search1, /na\we/i);
my $match2 = match($search2, qr/che\wk/i);
if ( $match1 and $match2 ) {
print "String found\n";
printf qq{"%s" found at offset %d\n}, #$match1;
printf qq{"%s" found at offset %d\n}, #$match2;
}
sub match {
my ($s, $re) = #_;
croak "Compiled regex required" unless ref $re eq 'Regexp';
return unless $s =~ $re;
[ substr($s, $-[0], $+[0]-$-[0]), $-[0] ];
}
output
String found
"NAME" found at offset 3
"CHECK" found at offset 4
I think it would also be neater to write this as
my $match1 = match($search1, qr/na\we/i);
my $match2 = match($search2, qr/che\wk/i);
if ( $match1 and $match2 ) {
print "String found\n";
printf qq{"%s" found at offset %d\n}, #$match1;
printf qq{"%s" found at offset %d\n}, #$match2;
}
Break your compound if into multiple if statements
my $search1 = "aaaNAMEaaaa";
my $search2 = "bbbbCHECKbbb";
my ($matched1, $matched2, $pos1, $pos2);
if ( $search1 =~ /na\we/i) {
$matched1 = $&;
$pos1 = index( $search1, $matched1);
if ($search2 =~ /che\wk/i ) {
print "String found\n";
$matched2 = $&;
$pos2 = index( $search2, $matched2);
#do whatever you need with $pos1 & $pos2
} else {
#reset previously set vars
undef $matched1;
undef $pos1;
}
}

Perl Grepping from an Array

I need to grep a value from an array.
For example i have a values
#a=('branches/Soft/a.txt', 'branches/Soft/h.cpp', branches/Main/utils.pl');
#Array = ('branches/Soft/a.txt', 'branches/Soft/h.cpp', branches/Main/utils.pl','branches/Soft/B2/c.tct', 'branches/Docs/A1/b.txt');
Now, i need to loop #a and find each value matches to #Array. For Example
It works for me with grep. You'd do it the exact same way as in the More::ListUtils example below, except for having grep instead of any. You can also shorten it to
my $got_it = grep { /$str/ } #paths;
my #matches = grep { /$str/ } #paths;
This by default tests with /m against $_, each element of the list in turn. The $str and #paths are the same as below.
You can use the module More::ListUtils as well. Its function any returns true/false depending on whether the condition in the block is satisfied for any element in the list, ie. whether there was a match in this case.
use warnings;
use strict;
use Most::ListUtils;
my $str = 'branches/Soft/a.txt';
my #paths = ('branches/Soft/a.txt', 'branches/Soft/b.txt',
'branches/Docs/A1/b.txt', 'branches/Soft/B2/c.tct');
my $got_match = any { $_ =~ m/$str/ } #paths;
With the list above, containing the $str, the $got_match is 1.
Or you can roll it by hand and catch the match as well
foreach my $p (#paths) {
print "Found it: $1\n" if $p =~ m/($str)/;
}
This does print out the match.
Note that the strings you show in your example do not contain the one to match. I added it to my list for a test. Without it in the list no match is found in either of the examples.
To test for more than one string, with the added sample
my #strings = ('branches/Soft/a.txt', 'branches/Soft/h.cpp', 'branches/Main/utils.pl');
my #paths = ('branches/Soft/a.txt', 'branches/Soft/h.cpp', 'branches/Main/utils.pl',
'branches/Soft/B2/c.tct', 'branches/Docs/A1/b.txt');
foreach my $str (#strings) {
foreach my $p (#paths) {
print "Found it: $1\n" if $p =~ m/($str)/;
}
# Or, instead of the foreach loop above use
# my $match = grep { /$str/ } #paths;
# print "Matched for $str\n" if $match;
}
This prints
Found it: branches/Soft/a.txt
Found it: branches/Soft/h.cpp
Found it: branches/Main/utils.pl
When the lines with grep are uncommented and foreach ones commented out I get the corresponding prints for the same strings.
The slashes dot in $a will pose a problem so you either have to escape them it when doing regex match or use a simple eq to find the matches:
Regex match with $a escaped:
my #matches = grep { /\Q$a\E/ } #array;
Simple comparison with "equals":
my #matches = grep { $_ eq $a } #array;
With your sample data both will give an empty array #matches because there is no match.
This Solved My Question. Thanks to all especially #zdim for the valuable time and support
my #SVNFILES = ('branches/Soft/a.txt', 'branches/Soft/b.txt');
my #paths = ('branches/Soft/a.txt', 'branches/Soft/b.txt',
'branches/Docs/A1/b.txt', 'branches/Soft/B2/c.tct');
foreach my $svn (#SVNFILES)
{
chomp ($svn);
my $m = grep { /$svn/ } (#paths);
if ( $m eq '0' ) {
print "Files Mismatch\n";
exit 1;
}
}
You should escape characters like '/' and '.' in any regex when you need it as a character.
Likewise :
$a="branches\/Soft\/a\.txt"
Retry whatever you did with either grep or perl with that. If it still doesn't work, tell us precisely what you tried.

Counting occurrences of a word in a string in Perl

I am trying to find out the number of occurrences of "The/the". Below is the code I tried"
print ("Enter the String.\n");
$inputline = <STDIN>;
chop($inputline);
$regex="\[Tt\]he";
if($inputline ne "")
{
#splitarr= split(/$regex/,$inputline);
}
$scalar=#splitarr;
print $scalar;
The string is :
Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the
The
The output that it gives is 7. However with the string :
Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the
the output is 5. I suspect my regex. Can anyone help in pointing out what's wrong.
I get the correct number - 6 - for the first string
However your method is wrong, because if you count the number of pieces you get by splitting on the regex pattern it will give you different values depending on whether the word appears at the beginning of the string. You should also put word boundaries \b into your regular expression to prevent the regex from matching something like theory
Also, it is unnecessary to escape the square brackets, and you can use the /i modifier to do a case-independent match
Try something like this instead
use strict;
use warnings;
print 'Enter the String: ';
my $inputline = <>;
chomp $inputline;
my $regex = 'the';
if ( $inputline ne '' ) {
my #matches = $inputline =~ /\b$regex\b/gi;
print scalar #matches, " occurrences\n";
}
With split, you're counting the substrings between the the's. Use match instead:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my $regex = qr/[Tt]he/;
for my $string ('Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the The',
'Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the',
'the theological cathedral'
) {
my $count = () = $string =~ /$regex/g;
print $count, "\n";
my #between = split /$regex/, $string;
print 0 + #between, "\n";
print join '|', #between;
print "\n";
}
Note that both methods return the same number for the two inputs you mentioned (and the first one returns 6, not 7).
The following snippet uses a code side-effect to increment a counter, followed by an always-failing match to keep searching. It produces the correct answer for matches that overlap (e.g. "aaaa" contains "aa" 3 times, not 2). The split-based answers don't get that right.
my $i;
my $string;
$i = 0;
$string = "aaaa";
$string =~ /aa(?{$i++})(?!)/;
print "'$string' contains /aa/ x $i (should be 3)\n";
$i = 0;
$string = "Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the The";
$string =~ /[tT]he(?{$i++})(?!)/;
print "'$string' contains /[tT]he/ x $i (should be 6)\n";
$i = 0;
$string = "Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the";
$string =~ /[tT]he(?{$i++})(?!)/;
print "'$string' contains /[tT]he/ x $i (should be 5)\n";
What you need is 'countof' operator to count the number of matches:
my $string = "Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the The";
my $count = () = $string =~/[Tt]he/g;
print $count;
If you want to select only the word the or The, add word boundary:
my $string = "Hello the how are you the wanna work on the project but i the u the The";
my $count = () = $string =~/\b[Tt]he\b/g;
print $count;

In regular expression matching of Perl, is it possible to know number of matches in a{n,}?

What I mean is:
For example, a{3,} will match 'a' at least three times greedly. It may find five times, 10 times, etc. I need this number. I need this number for the rest of the code.
I can do the rest less efficiently without knowing it, but I thought maybe Perl has some built-in variable to give this number or is there some trick to get it?
Just capture it and use length.
if (/(a{3,})/) {
print length($1), "\n";
}
Use #LAST_MATCH_END and #LAST_MATCH_START
my $str = 'jlkjmkaaaaaamlmk';
$str =~ /a{3,}/;
say $+[0]-$-[0];
Output:
6
NB: This will work only with a one-character pattern.
Here's an idea (maybe this is what you already had?) assuming the pattern you're interested in counting has multiple characters and variable length:
capture the substring which matches the pattern{3,} subpattern
then match the captured substring globally against pattern (note the absence of the quantifier), and force a list context on =~ to get the number of matches.
Here's a sample code to illustrate this (where $patt is the subpattern you're interested in counting)
my $str = "some catbratmatrattatblat thing";
my $patt = qr/b?.at/;
if ($str =~ /some ((?:$patt){3,}) thing/) {
my $count = () = $1 =~ /$patt/g;
print $count;
...
}
Another (admittedly somewhat trivial) example with 2 subpatterns
my $str = "some catbratmatrattatblat thing 11,33,446,70900,";
my $patt1 = qr/b?.at/;
my $patt2 = qr/\d+,/;
if ($str =~ /some ((?:$patt1){3,}) thing ((?:$patt2){2,})/) {
my ($substr1, $substr2) = ($1, $2);
my $count1 = () = $substr1 =~ /$patt1/g;
my $count2 = () = $substr2 =~ /$patt2/g;
say "count1: " . $count1;
say "count2: " . $count2;
}
Limitation(s) of this approach:
Fails miserably with lookarounds. See amon's example.
If you have a pattern of type /AB{n,}/ where A and B are complex patterns, we can split the regex into multiple pieces:
my $string = "ABABBBB";
my $n = 3;
my $count = 0;
TRY:
while ($string =~ /A/gc) {
my $pos = pos $string; # remember position for manual backtracking
$count++ while $string =~ /\GB/g;
if ($count < $n) {
$count = 0;
pos($string) = $pos; # restore previous position
} else {
last TRY;
}
}
say $count;
Output: 4
However, embedding code into the regex to do the counting may be more desirable, as it is more general:
my $string = "ABABBBB";
my $count;
$string =~ /A(?{ $count = 0 })(?:B(?{ $count++ })){3,}/ and say $count;
Output: 4.
The downside is that this code won't run on older perls. (Code was tested on v14 & v16).
Edit: The first solution will fail if the B pattern backtracks, e.g. $B = qr/BB?/. That pattern should match the ABABBBB string three times, but the strategy will only let it match two times. The solution using embedded code allows proper backtracking.