matching just one (regex with quantifier and grouping in python) - regex

regex with quantifier and grouping in python
p = re.compile('[29]{1}')
p.match('29')
why does 29 match p? i thought i explicitly said it's [29] (2 or 9) with {1} quantifier.
Shouldn't it be JUST 2 OR 9? Or does it match the first group and not care about the rest
thanks!

It is matching because it matches the sub-string '2'. The way regex works is that it returns true is there exists any substring inside the string that matches. The regex you are using would match '46657467562374746', because it contains a '2'. If you need the whole thing to match from beginning to end, you need to use anchors:
p = re.compile('^[29]{1}$')
p.match('29')
The hat (^) represents the beginning of the string and the dollar ($) represents the end of the string. So now this will only match if the whole sting is a single 2 or a single 9, instead of just containing a 2 or 9.

Related

regex match two words based on a matching substring

there are 4 strings as shown below
ABC_FIXED_20220720_VALUEABC.csv
ABC_FIXED_20220720_VALUEABCQUERY_answer.csv
ABC_FIXED_20220720_VALUEDEF.csv
ABC_FIXED_20220720_VALUEDEFQUERY_answer.csv
Two strings are considered as matched based on a matching substring value (VALUEABC, VALUEDEF in the above shown strings). Thus I am looking to match first 2 (having VALUEABC) and then next 2 (having VALUEDEF). The matched strings are identified based on the same value returned for one regex group.
What I tried so far
ABC.*[0-9]{8}_(.*[^QUERY_answer])(?:QUERY_answer)?.csv
This returns regex group-1 (from (.*[^QUERY_answer])) value "VALUEABC" for first 2 strings and "VALUEDEF" for next 2 strings and thus desired matching achieved.
But the problem with above regex is that as soon as the value ends with any of the characters of "QUERY_answer", the regex doesn't match any value for the grouping. For instance, the below 2 strings doesn't match at all as the VALUESTU ends with "U" here :
ABC_FIXED_20220720_VALUESTU.csv
ABC_FIXED_20220720_VALUESTUQUERY_answer.csv
I tried to use Negative Lookahead:
ABC.*[0-9]{8}_(.*(?!QUERY_answer))(?:QUERY_answer)?.csv
but in this case the grouping-1 value is returned as "VALUESTU" for first string and "VALUESTUQUERY_answer" for second string, thus effectively making the 2 strings unmatched.
Any way to achieve the desired matching?
With your shown samples please try following regex.
^ABC_[^_]*_[0-9]+_(.*?)(?:QUERY_answer)?\.csv$
OR to match exact 8 digits try:
^ABC_[^_]*_[0-9]{8}_(.*?)(?:QUERY_answer)?\.csv$
Here is the online demo for above regex.
Explanation: Adding detailed explanation for above regex.
^ABC_[^_]*_ ##Matching from starting of value ABC followed by _ till next occurrence of _.
[0-9]+_ ##Matching continuous occurrences of digits followed by _ here.
(.*?) ##Creating one and only capturing group using lazy match which is opposite of greedy match.
(?:QUERY_answer)? ##In a non-capturing group matching QUERY_answer and keeping it optional.
\.csv$ ##Matching dot literal csv at the end of the value.
You need
ABC.*[0-9]{8}_(.*?)(?:QUERY_answer)?\.csv
See the regex demo.
Note
.*[^QUERY_answer] matches any zero or more chars other than line break chars as many as possible, and then any one char other than Q, U, E, etc., i.e. any char in the negated character class. This is replaced with .*?, to match any zero or more chars other than line break chars as few as possible.
(?:QUERY_answer)? - the group is made non-capturing to reduce grouping complexity.
\.csv - the . is escaped to match a literal dot.

How to use Ruby gsub with regex to do partial string substitution

I have a pipe delimited file which has a line
H||CUSTCHQH2H||PHPCCIPHP|1010032000|28092017|25001853||||
I want to substitute the date (28092017) with a regex "[0-9]{8}" if the first character is "H"
I tried the following example to test my understanding where Im trying to subtitute "a" with "i".
str = "|123||a|"
str.gsub /\|(.*?)\|(.*?)\|(.*?)\|/, "\|\\1\|\|\\1\|i\|"
But this is giving o/p as
"|123||123|i|"
Any clue how this can be achieved?
You may replace the first occurrence of 8 digits inside pipes if a string starts with H using
s = "H||CUSTCHQH2H||PHPCCIPHP|1010032000|28092017|25001853||||"
p s.gsub(/\A(H.*?\|)[0-9]{8}(?=\|)/, '\100000000')
# or
p s.gsub(/\AH.*?\|\K[0-9]{8}(?=\|)/, '00000000')
See the Ruby demo. Here, the value is replaced with 8 zeros.
Pattern details
\A - start of string (^ is the start of a line in Ruby)
(H.*?\|) - Capturing group 1 (you do not need it when using the variation with \K): H and then any 0+ chars as few as possible
\K - match reset operator that discards the text matched so far
[0-9]{8} - eight digits
(?=\|) - the next char must be |, but it is not added to the match value since it is a positive lookahead that does not consume text.
The \1 in the first gsub is a replacement backreference to the value in Group 1.

Regex length constraint

This is my current regex.
(Needs at least one alphabet, number and special character. Length between 8 to 100)
^(?=.*([a-zA-Z]))(?=.*\d)(?=.*(_|[^\w])).+{8,100}$
I want to prevent string that starts with or end with space.
To do that, I tried
^(?=.*([a-zA-Z]))(?=.*\d)(?=.*(_|[^\w]))[^\s].+[^\s]{8,100}$
But the {8, 100} only applied to last [^\s].
How can I fix it?
Instead of matching .+{8,100} (which isn't valid regex syntax), match a non-space, followed by 6 to 98 characters, followed by another non-space. You can use \S instead of [^\s], and similarly, \W instead of [^\w]:
^(?=.*([a-zA-Z]))(?=.*\d)(?=.*(?:_|\W))\S.{6,98}\S$
^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^

Regex for a string with alpha numeric containing a '.' character

I have not been able to find a proper regex to match any string not starting and ending with some condition.
This matches
AS.E
23.5
3.45
This doesn't match
.263
321.
.ASD
The regex can be alpha-numeric character with optional '.' character and it has to be with in range of 2-4(minimum 2 chars & maximum 4 chars).
I was able to create one ->
^[^\.][A-Z|0-9|\.]{2,4}$
but with this I couldn't achieve mask '.' character at the end of regex.
Thanks.
Maybe not the most optimized but a working one. Created step by step:
The first character should be alphanumeric
^[a-zA-Z0-9]
0, 1 or 2 character alphanumeric or . but not matching end of string
[a-zA-Z0-9\.]{0,2}
an alphanumeric character matching end of string
[a-zA-Z0-9]$
Concatenate all of this to obtain your regex
^[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9\.]{0,2}[a-zA-Z0-9]$
Edit: This regex allows multiple dots (up to 2)
If I guessed correctly, you want to match all words that are
Between 2 and 4 characters long ...
... and start and end with a character from [A-Z0-9] ...
... and have characters from [A-Z0-9.] in the middle ...
... and are not preceded or followed by a ..
Try this regex to match all these substrings in a text:
(?<=^|[^.])[A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9.]{0,2}[A-Z0-9](?=$|[^.])
However, note that this will match the AA in .AAAA.. If you don't want this match, then please give more details on your requirements.
When you are only interested in the number of matches, but not the matched strings, then you could use
(^|[^.])[A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9.]{0,2}[A-Z0-9]($|[^.])
If you have one string, and want to know whether that string completely matches or not, then use
^[A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9.]{0,2}[A-Z0-9]$
If there may be at most one . inside the match, replace the part [A-Z0-9.]{0,2} with ([A-Z0-9]?[A-Z0-9.]?|[A-Z0-9.]?[A-Z0-9]?).
You can use this pattern to match what you say,
^[^\.][a-zA-Z0-9\.]{2,4}[^\.]$
Check the result here..
https://regex101.com/r/8BNdDg/3

Regular Expression begining of string with special characters

Using this for an example string
+$43073$7
and need the 5 number sequence from it I'm using the Regex expression
#"\$+(?<lot>\d{5})"
which is matching up any +$ in the string. I tried
#"^\$+(?<lot>\d{5})"
as the +$ are always at the beginning of the string. What will work?
If you use anchor ^, you need to include the + symbol at the first and don't forget to escape it because + is a special meta character in regex which repeats the previous token one or more times.
#"^\+\$(?<lot>\d{5})"
And without the anchor, it would be like
#"\$(?<lot>\d{5})"
And get the 5 digit number you want from group index 1.
DEMO
I would match what you want:
\d+
or if you only want digits after "special" characters at the start of input:
^\W+(\d+)
grabbing group 1