Regex - Not a match if there is a dash - regex

I have two kinds of strings.
index_12323 (just numbers, no dash).
index_12a-dcd-edff (basically an uuid).
What's a regex that only matches the first one, not the second one, basically, if it has dash, it is not a match.
Thanks.

Something of this sort is what you're looking for:
^index_[0-9]+$

Because the "_" (underscore) is covered in the word character class, there is no need to explicitly check for it. Use this regex to match on the first pattern:
^\w+\d+$

Related

Regex to find if all the characters in a word are the same specific character

I have a set of words coming in one by one like aa, ##, ???, ~~~, ?~ etc
I need a regex to find if any of these words is containing only ? or only ~.
Of the above input examples, ??? and ~~~ should match but not the others.
I tried ^[\s?]*$ and ^[\s~]*$ separately and it works, I am trying to combine them.
^[\s?||~]*$ doesn't work as it also recognizes ?~ as valid.
Any help?
You can use this regex, which looks for a string starting with a ~ or a ?, and then asserts that every other character in the string is the same as the first one using a backreference (\1):
^([~?])\1+$
Demo on regex101
You need to use backreference to achived your desired result.
If you want only ~ or ? use
^([~?])\1+$
If you want any repetitive pattern, use
^(.)\1+$
Explanation (.) or ([~?]) capturing the first charactor.
Then, \1+ checking the first charactor, one or more times (backreferencing)
You want to match lines that both start and end with any number of either a tilde or questionmark. That would be ^\(~\|?\)*$. The parentheses to make a group and the vertical bar to do the 'or' need to be backslash escaped.

Cleaning up a regular expression which has lots of repetition

I am looking to clean up a regular expression which matches 2 or more characters at a time in a sequence. I have made one which works, but I was looking for something shorter, if possible.
Currently, it looks like this for every character that I want to search for:
([A]{2,}|[B]{2,}|[C]{2,}|[D]{2,}|[E]{2,}|...)*
Example input:
AABBBBBBCCCCAAAAAADD
See this question, which I think was asking the same thing you are asking. You want to write a regex that will match 2 or more of the same character. Let's say the characters you are looking for are just capital letters, [A-Z]. You can do this by matching one character in that set and grouping it by putting it in parentheses, then matching that group using the reference \1 and saying you want two or more of that "group" (which is really just the one character that it matched).
([A-Z])\1{1,}
The reason it's {1,} and not {2,} is that the first character was already matched by the set [A-Z].
Not sure I understand your needs but, how about:
[A-E]{2,}
This is the same as yours but shorter.
But if you want multiple occurrences of each letter:
(?:([A-Z])\1+)+
where ([A-Z]) matches one capital letter and store it in group 1
\1 is a backreference that repeats group 1
+ assume that are one or more repetition
Finally it matches strings like the one you've given: AABBBBBBCCCCAAAAAADD
To be sure there're no other characters in the string, you have to anchor the regex:
^(?:([A-Z])\1+)+$
And, if you wnat to match case insensitive:
^(?i)(?:([A-Z])\1+)+$

REGEX - nesting quantifiers in combined statements

A last name in Hebrew can be either in an English format, which is just a regular combination of letters, like "Smith", "Camp", "Jack" etc, or a combination of two words with a space in the middle, like "Ben David", "Bar Yohay", "Yom Tov". i tried to create a regexp that allows either the first format - a last name that is at least two letters long, or the second one - a last name that is composed of two words, each two or more letters long, with a space in the middle. here is what i came up with:
(^[a-z]{2,}$)|((^[a-z]{2,}$)(^[ ]$)(^[a-z]{2,}$))
(I know it does not allow capital letters)
For some reason it does allow names of the first format like Smith and Jerry, but does not allow names of the second one. is there a problem with the formatting of the space in the middle? This should be an easy one for regexp professionals. thanks in advance :)
You can simplify your regex to
^[a-z]{2,}(?: [a-z]{2,})?$
You are misusing anchors (^ and $). These match the beginning and ending of the string, respectively. What you actually want is:
(^[a-z]{2,}$)|(^([a-z]{2,})([ ])([a-z]{2,})$)
Further, you can simplify your expression to:
^[a-z]{2,}$|^[a-z]{2,} [a-z]{2,}$
unless you specifically need to capture groups.
Or (so you only need one pair of anchors):
^(?:[a-z]{2,}|[a-z]{2,} [a-z]{2,})$
(?:...) is a non-capturing group, necessary to restrict the scope of the alternation.

match the same unknown character multiple times

I have a regex problem I can't seem to solve. I actually don't know if regex can do this, but I need to match a range of characters n times at the end of a pattern.
eg. blahblah[A-Z]{n}
The problem is whatever character matches the ending range need to be all the same.
For example, I want to match
blahblahAAAAA
blahblahEEEEE
blahblahQQQQQ
but not
blahblahADFES
blahblahZYYYY
Is there some regex pattern that can do this?
You can use this pattern: blahblah([A-Z])\1+
The \1 is a back-reference to the first capture group, in this case ([A-Z]). And the + will match that character one or more times. To limit it you can replace the + with a specific number of repetitions using {n}, such as \1{3} which will match it three times.
If you need the entire string to match then be sure to prefix with ^ and end with $, respectively, so that the pattern becomes ^blahblah([A-Z])\1+$
You can read more about back-references here.
In most regex implementations, you can accomplish this by referencing a capture group in your regex. For your example, you can use the following to match the same uppercase character five times:
blahblah([A-Z])\1{4}
Note that to match the regex n times, you need to use \1{n-1} since one match will come from the capture group.
blahblah(.)\1*\b should work in nearly all language flavors. (.) captures one of anything, then \1* matches that (the first match) any number of times.
blahblah([A-Z]|[a-z])\1+
This should help.

Matching parts of string that contain no consecutive dashes

I need a regex that will match strings of letters that do not contain two consecutive dashes.
I came close with this regex that uses lookaround (I see no alternative):
([-a-z](?<!--))+
Which given the following as input:
qsdsdqf--sqdfqsdfazer--azerzaer-azerzear
Produces three matches:
qsdsdqf-
sqdfqsdfazer-
azerzaer-azerzear
What I want however is:
qsdsdqf-
-sqdfqsdfazer-
-azerzaer-azerzear
So my regex loses the first dash, which I don't want.
Who can give me a hint or a regex that can do this?
This should work:
-?([^-]-?)*
It makes sure that there is at least one non-dash character between every two dashes.
Looks to me like you do want to match strings that contain double hyphens, but you want to break them into substrings that don't. Have you considered splitting it between pairs of hyphens? In other words, split on:
(?<=-)(?=-)
As for your regex, I think this is what you were getting at:
(?:[^-]+|-(?<!--)|\G-)+
The -(?<!--) will match one hyphen, but if the next character is also a hyphen the match ends. Next time around, \G- picks up the second hyphen because it's the next character; the only way that can happen (except at the beginning of the string) is if a previous match broke off at that point.
Be aware that this regex is more flavor dependent than most; I tested it in Java, but not all flavors support \G and lookbehinds.