How to match sequence group? - regex

Question

say, the given string is abcwhateverdefwhatever34567whatever012 How to match those group which are in sequence like match abc, def, 34567,012?
the regex i have now is (.)\1{2,} but it matches the same characters but not in sequence

Answer 1

If you're still looking for PHP code.
function getSequence($str) {
$prev = 0; $next = 0; $length = strlen($str);
$temp = "";
for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
$next = ord($str[$i]);
if ($next == $prev + 1) {
$temp .= $str[$i];
} else {
if (strlen($temp) > 1) $result[] = $temp;
$temp = $str[$i];
}
$prev = $next;
}
if (strlen($temp) > 1) $result[] = $temp;
return $result;
}
$str = "abcwhateverdefwhatever34567whatever012";
print_r(getSequence($str));

Answer 2

Here's a solution that solves the problem with regex. It's not very efficient though and I wouldn't recommend it.
from re import findall, X
text = "abcwhateverdefwhatever34567whatever012"
reg = r"""
(?:
(?:0(?=1))|
(?:(?<=0)1)|(?:1(?=2))|
(?:(?<=1)2)|(?:2(?=3))|
(?:(?<=2)3)|(?:3(?=4))|
(?:(?<=3)4)|(?:4(?=5))|
(?:(?<=4)5)|(?:5(?=6))|
(?:(?<=5)6)|(?:6(?=7))|
(?:(?<=6)7)|(?:7(?=8))|
(?:(?<=7)8)|(?:8(?=9))|
(?:(?<=8)9)|
(?:a(?=b))|
(?:(?<=a)b)|(?:b(?=c))|
(?:(?<=b)c)|(?:c(?=d))|
(?:(?<=c)d)|(?:d(?=e))|
(?:(?<=d)e)|(?:e(?=f))|
(?:(?<=e)f)
){1,}
"""
print findall(reg, text, X)
The result is:
['abc', 'def', '34567', '012']
As you can see I only added the numbers and the first 6 letters in the alphabet. It's should be fairly obvious how to continue.