I've got this odd string:
firstName:Paul Henry,retired:true,message:A, B & more,title:mr
which needs to be split into its <key>:<value> pairs. Unfortunately, key/value pairs are separated by , which itself can be part of the value. Hence, a simple string-split at , would not produce the correct result.
Keys contain only word characters and values can contain :.
What I need (I think) is something like
\w*:match-anything-but-comma-unless-comma-is-followed-by-space
What kind of works is
\w*:[\w ?!&%,]*(?![^,])
but of course I wouldn't want to explicitly list all characters in the character class (just listed a few for this example).
If you want to split on a comma, unless the comma is followed by a space, why not just:
,(?=\S)
Not sure what language you are using, but in C# the line might look like:
splitArray = Regex.Split(subjectString, #",(?=\S)");
You are trying to do something complicated with a regular expression that would be simple (and easy to understand) with a little code. That's usually a mistake. Just write a little code.
In your case, you want to split the input on commas. If you get a chunk that doesn't contain a colon, you want to treat it as part of the previous chunk. So just write that. For example, in Python, I'd do it like this:
chunks = input.split(',')
associations = []
for chunk in chunks:
if ':' in chunk:
associations.append(chunk)
else:
associations[-1] += ',' + chunk
map = dict(association.split(':') for association in associations)
Related
So I had this code working for a few months already, lets say I have a table called Categories, which has a string column called name, so I receive a string and I want to know if any category was mentioned (a mention occur when the string contains the substring: #name_of_a_category), the approach I follow for this was something like below:
categories.select { |category_i| content_received.downcase.match(/##{category_i.downcase}/)}
That worked pretty well until today suddenly started to receive an exception unmatched close parenthesis, I realized that the categories names can contain special chars so I decided to not consider special chars or spaces anymore (don't want to add restrictions to the user and at the same time don't want to deal with those cases so the policy is just to ignore it).
So the question is there a clean way of removing these special chars (maintaining the #) and matching the string (don't want to modify the data just ignore it while looking for mentions)?
You can also use
prep_content_received = content_received.gsub(/[^\w\s]|_/,'')
p categories.select { |c|
prep_content_received.match?(/\b#{c.gsub(/[^\w\s]|_/, '').strip()}\b/i)
}
See the Ruby demo
Details:
The prep_content_received = content_received.gsub(/[^\w\s]|_/,'') creates a copy of content_received with no special chars and _. Using it once reduced overhead if there are a lot of categories
Then, you iterate over the categories list, and each time check if the prep_content_received matches \b (word boundary) + category with all special chars, _ and leading/trailing whitespace stripped from it + \b in a case insensitive way (see the /i flag, no need to .downcase).
So after looking around I found some answers on the platform but nothing with my specific requirements (maybe I missed something, if so please let me know), and this is how I fix it for my case:
content_received = 'pepe is watching a #comedy :)'
categories = ['comedy :)', 'terror']
temp_content = content_received.downcase
categories.select { |category_i| temp_content.gsub(/[^\sa-zA-Z0-9]/, '#' => '#').match?(/##{category_i.downcase.
gsub(/[^\sa-zA-Z0-9]/, '')}/) }
For the sake of the example, I reduced the categories to a simple array of strings, basically the first gsub, remove any character that is not a letter or a number (any special character) and replace each # with an #, the second gsub is a simpler version of the first one.
You can test the snippet above here
I have a string, and I want to extract, using regular expressions, groups of characters that are between the character : and the other character /.
typically, here is a string example I'm getting:
'abcd:45.72643,4.91203/Rou:hereanotherdata/defgh'
and so, I want to retrieved, 45.72643,4.91203 and also hereanotherdata
As they are both between characters : and /.
I tried with this syntax in a easier string where there is only 1 time the pattern,
[tt]=regexp(str,':(\w.*)/','match')
tt = ':45.72643,4.91203/'
but it works only if the pattern happens once. If I use it in string containing multiples times the pattern, I get all the string between the first : and the last /.
How can I mention that the pattern will occur multiple time, and how can I retrieve it?
Use lookaround and a lazy quantifier:
regexp(str, '(?<=:).+?(?=/)', 'match')
Example (Matlab R2016b):
>> str = 'abcd:45.72643,4.91203/Rou:hereanotherdata/defgh';
>> result = regexp(str, '(?<=:).+?(?=/)', 'match')
result =
1×2 cell array
'45.72643,4.91203' 'hereanotherdata'
In most languages this is hard to do with a single regexp. Ultimately you'll only ever get back the one string, and you want to get back multiple strings.
I've never used Matlab, so it may be possible in that language, but based on other languages, this is how I'd approach it...
I can't give you the exact code, but a search indicates that in Matlab there is a function called strsplit, example...
C = strsplit(data,':')
That should will break your original string up into an array of strings, using the ":" as the break point. You can then ignore the first array index (as it contains text before a ":"), loop the rest of the array and regexp to extract everything that comes before a "/".
So for instance...
'abcd:45.72643,4.91203/Rou:hereanotherdata/defgh'
Breaks down into an array with parts...
1 - 'abcd'
2 - '45.72643,4.91203/Rou'
3 - 'hereanotherdata/defgh'
Then Ignore 1, and extract everything before the "/" in 2 and 3.
As John Mawer and Adriaan mentioned, strsplit is a good place to start with. You can use it for both ':' and '/', but then you will not be able to determine where each of them started. If you do it with strsplit twice, you can know where the ':' starts :
A='abcd:45.72643,4.91203/Rou:hereanotherdata/defgh';
B=cellfun(#(x) strsplit(x,'/'),strsplit(A,':'),'uniformoutput',0);
Now B has cells that start with ':', and has two cells in each cell that contain '/' also. You can extract it with checking where B has more than one cell, and take the first of each of them:
C=cellfun(#(x) x{1},B(cellfun('length',B)>1),'uniformoutput',0)
C =
1×2 cell array
'45.72643,4.91203' 'hereanotherdata'
Starting in 16b you can use extractBetween:
>> str = 'abcd:45.72643,4.91203/Rou:hereanotherdata/defgh';
>> result = extractBetween(str,':','/')
result =
2×1 cell array
{'45.72643,4.91203'}
{'hereanotherdata' }
If all your text elements have the same number of delimiters this can be vectorized too.
The data I want to parse has columns with the following format:
Character Big Medium Meaning ImageCode Small Constitutens Lesson Frame Strokes JH JTPL Heisig Story koohiiStory1 koohiiStory2 On-Reading Kun-Reading Examples:
All of those are separated by tabs \t (even though it may not look like it on the browser). Also notice at the end of each line there is a colon :. The problem is that the columns koohiiStory2 and examples may or may not exist and there may also be cases in which the data is corrupt and there is a tab inside Heisig Story but those are the minority.
What I'm trying to match is the values for On-Reading, Kun-Reading and Examples. All of these are distinct from the rest because they don't use standard english characters (romaji) but they use japanese characters instead with the exception of perhaps a few commas or dots. It is also guaranteed that either Kun-Reading or Examples will end with a colon : and that On-Reading and Kun-Reading will exist and that all three of the columns will be consecutive.
Here is some sample data.
How can I parse that to return this?
Alright, I'll give it a shot.
Since the content you expect is mostly non-ascii characters within a dot + space or tab* and :
(?<=\.(\s|\t)) // Positive lookbehind for a 'dot' + 'space or tab'
[^\w]+ // Any non words
(?=\:) // Positive lookahead for a ':'
Working sample on regex101
I'm converting a text file to a Tab-Delimited text file, and ran into a bit of a snag. I can get everything I need to work the way I want except for one small part.
One field I'm working with has the home addresses of the subjects as a single entry ("1234 Happy Lane Somewhere, St 12345") and I need each broken down by Street(Tab)City(Tab)State(Tab)Zip. The one part I'm hung up on is the Tab between the State and the Zip.
I've been using input=input.Replace throughout, and it's worked well so far, but I can't think of how to untangle this one. The wildcards I'm used to don't seem to be working, I can't replace ("?? #####") with ("??" + ControlChars.Tab + "#####")...which I honestly didn't expect to work, but it's the only idea on the matter I had.
I've read a bit about using Regex, but have no experience with it, and it seems a bit...overwhelming.
Is Regex my best option for this? If not, are there any other suggestions on solutions I may have missed?
Thanks for your time. :)
EDIT: Here's what I'm using so far. It makes some edits to the line in question, taking care of spaces, commas, and other text I don't need, but I've got nothing for the State/Zip situation; I've a bad habit of wiping something if it doesn't work, but I'll append the last thing I used to the very end, if that'll help.
If input Like "Guar*###/###-####" Then
input = input.Replace("Guar:", "")
input = input.Replace(" ", ControlChars.Tab)
input = input.Replace(",", ControlChars.Tab)
input = "C" + ControlChars.Tab + strAccount + ControlChars.Tab + input
End If
input = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(" #####", ControlChars.Tab + "#####") <-- Just one example of something that doesn't work.
This is what's written to input in this example
" Guar: LASTNAME,FIRSTNAME 999 E 99TH ST CITY,ST 99999 Tel: 999/999-9999"
And this is what I can get as a result so far
C 99999/9 LASTNAME FIRSTNAME 999 E 99TH ST CITY ST 99999 999/999-9999
With everything being exactly what I need besides the "ST 99999" bit (with actual data obviously omitted for privacy and professional whatnots).
UPDATE: Just when I thought it was all squared away, I've got another snag. The raw data gives me this.
# TERMINOLOGY ######### ##/##/#### # ###.##
And the end result is giving me this, because this is a chunk of data that was just fine as-is...before I removed the Tabs. Now I need a way to replace them after they've been removed, or to omit this small group of code from a document-wide Tab genocide I initiate the code with.
#TERMINOLOGY###########/##/########.##
Would a variant on rgx.Replace work best here? Or can I copy the code to a variable, remove Tabs from the document, then insert the variable without losing the tabs?
I think what you're looking for is
Dim r As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(" (\d{5})(?!\d)")
Dim input As String = rgx.Replace(input, ControlChars.Tab + "$1")
The first line compiles the regular expression. The \d matches a digit, and the {5}, as you can guess, matches 5 repetitions of the previous atom. The parentheses surrounding the \d{5} is known as a capture group, and is responsible for putting what's captured in a pseudovariable named $1. The (?!\d) is a more advanced concept known as a negative lookahead assertion, and it basically peeks at the next character to check that it's not a digit (because then it could be a 6-or-more digit number, where the first 5 happened to get matched). Another version is
" (\d{5})\b"
where the \b is a word boundary, disallowing alphanumeric characters following the digits.
I have a string of 5 characters out of which the first two characters should be in some list and next three should be in some other list.
How could i validate them with regular expressions?
Example:
List for First two characters {VBNET, CSNET, HTML)}
List for next three characters {BEGINNER, EXPERT, MEDIUM}
My Strings are going to be: VBBEG, CSBEG, etc.
My regular expression should find that the input string first two characters could be either VB, CS, HT and the rest should also be like that.
Would the following expression work for you in a more general case (so that you don't have hardcoded values): (^..)(.*$)
- returns the first two letters in the first group, and the remaining letters in the second group.
something like this:
^(VB|CS|HT)(BEG|EXP|MED)$
This recipe works for me:
^(VB|CS|HT)(BEG|EXP|MED)$
I guess (VB|CS|HT)(BEG|EXP|MED) should do it.
If your strings are as well-defined as this, you don't even need regex - simple string slicing would work.
For example, in Python we might say:
mystring = "HTEXP"
prefix = mystring[0:2]
suffix = mystring[2:5]
if (prefix in ['HT','CS','VB']) AND (suffix in ['BEG','MED','EXP']):
pass # valid!
else:
pass # not valid. :(
Don't use regex where elementary string operations will do.