I want to match the following rules:
One dash is allowed at the start of a number.
Only values between 0 and 9 should be allowed.
I currently have the following regex pattern, I'm matching the inverse so that I can thrown an exception upon finding a match that doesn't follow the rules:
[^-0-9]
The downside to this pattern is that it works for all cases except a hyphen in the middle of the String will still pass. For example:
"-2304923" is allowed correctly but "9234-342" is also allowed and shouldn't be.
Please let me know what I can do to specify the first character as [^-0-9] and the rest as [^0-9]. Thanks!
This regex will work for you:
^-?\d+$
Explanation: start the string ^, then - but optional (?), the digit \d repeated few times (+), and string must finish here $.
You can do this:
(?:^|\s)(-?\d+)(?:["'\s]|$)
^^^^^ non capturing group for start of line or space
^^^^^ capture number
^^^^^^^^^ non capturing group for end of line, space or quote
See it work
This will capture all strings of numbers in a line with an optional hyphen in front.
-2304923" "9234-342" 1234 -1234
++++++++ captured
^^^^^^^^ NOT captured
++++ captured
+++++ captured
I don't understand how your pattern - [^-0-9] is matching those strings you are talking about. That pattern is just the opposite of what you want. You have simply negated the character class by using caret(^) at the beginning. So, this pattern would match anything except the hyphen and the digits.
Anyways, for your requirement, first you need to match one hyphen at the beginning. So, just keep it outside the character class. And then to match any number of digits later on, you can use [0-9]+ or \d+.
So, your pattern to match the required format should be:
-[0-9]+ // or -\d+
The above regex is used to find the pattern in some large string. If you want the entire string to match this pattern, then you can add anchors at the ends of the regex: -
^-[0-9]+$
For a regular expression like this, it's sometimes helpful to think of it in terms of two cases.
Is the first character messed up somehow?
If not, are any of the other characters messed up somehow?
Combine these with |
(^[^-0-9]|^.+?[^0-9])
Related
I have a conditional lookahead regex that tests to see if there is a number substring at the end of a string, and if so match for the numbers, and if not, match for another substring
The string in question: "H2K 101"
If just the lookahead is used, i.e. (?=\d{1,8}$)(\d{1,8}$), the lookahead succeeds, and "101" is found in capture group 1
When the lookahead is placed into a conditional, i.e. (?(?=\d{1,8}\z)(\d{1,8}\z)|([a-zA-Z]+[\d_-]{1,8}[a-zA-Z]+)), the lookahead now fails, and the second pattern is used, matching "H2K", and a "2" is found in capture group 2.
If the test string has the "2" swapped for a letter, i.e. "HKK 101"
then the lookahead conditional works as expected, and the number "101" is once again found in capture group 1.
I've tested this in Regex101 and other PCRE engines, and all work the same, so clearly I'm missing something obvious about conditionals or the condition regex I'm using. Any insight greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
The look ahead starts at the current position, so initially it fails, and the alternative is used -- where it finds a match at the current position.
If you want the look ahead to succeed when still at the initial position, you need to allow for the intermediate characters to occur. Also, when the alternative kicks in, realise that there can follow a second match that still uses the look ahead, but now at a position where the look ahead is successful.
From what I understand, you are interested in one match only, not two consecutive matches (or more). So that means you should attempt to match the whole string, and capture the part of interest in a capture group. Also, the look ahead should be made to succeed when still at the initial position. This all means you need to inject several .*. There is no need for a conditional.
(?=.*\d{1,8}\z).*?(\d{1,8}\z)|([a-zA-Z]+[\d_-]{1,8}[a-zA-Z]+).*
Note also that (?=.*\d{1,8}\z) succeeds if and only when (?=.*\d\z) succeeds, so you can simplify that:
(?=.*\d\z).*?(\d{1,8}\z)|([a-zA-Z]+[\d_-]{1,8}[a-zA-Z]+).*
There are two capture groups. It there is a match, exactly one of the capture groups will have a non-empty matching content, which is the content you need.
You want to match a number of specific length at the end of the string, and if there is none, match something else.
There is no need for a conditional here. Conditional patterns are necessary to examine what to match next at the given position inside the string based either on a specific group match or a lookaround test. They are not useful when you want to give priority to a specific pattern.
Here, you can use a PCRE pattern based on the \K operator like
.*?\K\d{1,8}\z|[a-zA-Z]+[\d_-]{1,8}[a-zA-Z]+
Or, using capturing groups
(?|.*?(\d{1,8})\z|([a-zA-Z]+[\d_-]{1,8}[a-zA-Z]+))
See the regex demo #1 and regex demo #2.
Details:
.*?\K\d{1,8}$ - any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as few as possible, then the match reset operator that discards the text matched so far, then one to eight digits at the end of string
| - or
[a-zA-Z]+[\d_-]{1,8}[a-zA-Z]+ - one or more letters, 1-8 digits, underscores or hyphens, and then one or more letters.
And
(?| - start of the branch reset group:
.*? - any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as few as possible
(\d{1,8}) - Group 1: one to eight digits
\z - end of string
| - or
( - Group 1 start:
[a-zA-Z]+ - one or more ASCII letters
[\d_-]{1,8} - one to eight digits, underscores, hyphens
[a-zA-Z]+ - one or more ASCII letters
) - Group 1 end
) - end of the group.
I am currently trying to validate a regex pattern for a names list among other things.
It actually works so far except when I try to test the limits. If the name is quite long, a maximum of 128 characters is allowed and then at the end a character which is defined in an inner group, such as:. a separator e.g. Space or a puncture, catastrophic backtracking occurs. Somehow I don't quite understand that because I would assume that group one (?:[\p{L}\p{Nd}\p{Ps}])+ 1 x must be there, group (?:\p{Zs}\p{P}|\p{P}\p{Zs}|[\p{P}\p{Zs}])? is optional and if the group has to be valid at the end (?:[\p{L}\p{Nd}\p{Pe}.]). The rear 2 groups can occur more often.
Full pattern
^(?!.{129})(?!.["])(?:[\p{L}\p{Nd}\p{Ps}])+(?:(?:\p{Zs}\p{P}|\p{P}\p{Zs}|[\p{P}\p{Zs}])?(?:[\p{L}\p{Nd}\p{Pe}.]))*$
Tests & Samples
https://regex101.com/r/6E0Khd/1
You need to re-phrase the pattern in such a way so that the consequent regex parts could not match at the same location inside the string.
You can use
^(?!.{129})(?!.")[\p{L}\p{Nd}\p{Ps}][\p{L}\p{Nd}\p{Pe}.]*(?:(?:\p{Zs}\p{P}?|\p{P}\p{Zs}?)[\p{L}\p{Nd}\p{Pe}.]+)*$
See the regex demo.
Your regex was ^<Lookahead_1><Lookahead_2><P_I>+(?:<OPT_SEP>?<P_II>)*$. You need to make sure your string only starts with a char that matches <P_I> pattern, the rest of the chars can match <P_II> pattern. So, it should look like ^<Lookahead_1><Lookahead_2><P_I><P_II>*(?:<SEP><P_II>+)*$. Note the P_I pattern is used to match the first char only, P_II pattern is added right after P_I to match zero or more chars matching that pattern, SEP pattern is now obligatory and P_II pattern is quantified with +.
I also shrunk the (?:\p{Zs}\p{P}|\p{P}\p{Zs}|[\p{P}\p{Zs}]) pattern into (?:\p{Zs}\p{P}?|\p{P}\p{Zs}?) (it matches either a horizontal whitespace and an optional punctuation proper symbol, or an optional punctuation proper symbol followed with an optional horizontal whitespace.
Note that \p{Zs} does not match a TAB char, you may want to use [\p{Zs}\t] instead.
I have a comma separated string which I want to validate using a regex. What I have written is gives me a match if there a part wrong later in the string. I want to discard it completely if any part is wrong.
My regex : ^(?:[\w\.]+,{1}(?:STR|INT|REAL){1},{1}(\s*|$))+
Positive Case : Component,STR,YoungGenUse,STR,YoungGenMax,STR,OldGenUse,INT,OldGenMax,INT,PermGenUse,INT,PermGenMax,INT,MajCollCnt,INT,MinCollDur,REAL,MinCollCnt,INT,
Negative Case :
Component,STR,YoungGenUse,STR,YoungGenMax,TEST,OldGenUse,INT,OldGenMax,INT,PermGenUse,INT,PermGenMax,INT,MajCollCnt,INT,MinCollDur,REAL,MinCollCnt,INT,
For the second case, my regex gives a match for the bold portion eventhough, later there is an incorrect part (TEST). How can I modify my regex to discard the entire string?
The pattern that you tried would not match TEST in YoungGenMax,TEST because the alternatives STR|INT|REAL do not match it.
It would show until the last successful match in the repetition which would be Component,STR,YoungGenUse,STR,
You have to add the anchor at the end, outside of the repetition of the group, to indicate that the whole pattern should be followed by asserting the end of the string.
There are no spaces or dots in your string, so you might leave out \s* and use \w+ without the dot in the character class. Note that \s could also possibly match a newline.
^(?:\w+,(?:STR|INT|REAL),)+$
Regex demo
If you want to keep matching optional whitespace chars and the dot:
^(?:[\w.]+,(?:STR|INT|REAL),\s*)+$
Regex demo
Note that by repeating the group with the comma at the end, the string should always end with a comma. You can omit {1} from the pattern as it is superfluous.
your regex must keep matching until end of the string, so you must use $ to indicate end of the line:
^(?:[\w.]+,{1}(?:STR|INT|REAL){1},{1}(\s*|$))+$
Regex Demo
Not quite sure how to go about this, but basically what I want to do is match a character, say a for example. In this case all of the following would not contain matches (i.e. I don't want to match them):
aa
aaa
fooaaxyz
Whereas the following would:
a (obviously)
fooaxyz (this would only match the letter a part)
My knowledge of RegEx is not great, so I am not even sure if this is possible. Basically what I want to do is match any single a that has any other non a character around it (except for the start and end of the string).
Basically what I want to do is match any single a that has any other non a character around it (except for the start and end of the string).
^[^\sa]*\Ka(?=[^\sa]*$)
DEMO
\K discards the previously matched characters and lookahead assertes whether a match is possibel or not. So the above matches only the letter a which satifies the conditions.
OR
a{2,}(*SKIP)(*F)|a
DEMO
You may use a combination of a lookbehind and a lookahead:
(?<!a)a(?!a)
See the regex demo and the regex graph:
Details
(?<!a) - a negative lookbehind that fails the match if, immediately to the left of the current location, there is a a char
a - an a char
(?!a) - a negative lookahead that fails the match if, immediately to the right of the current location, there is a a char.
You need two things:
a negated character class: [^a] (all except "a")
anchors (^ and $) to ensure that the limits of the string are reached (in other words, that the pattern matches the whole string and not only a substring):
Result:
^[^a]*a[^a]*$
Once you know there is only one "a", you can use the way you want to extract/replace/remove it depending of the language you use.
I need to extract the last number that is inside a string. I'm trying to do this with regex and negative lookaheads, but it's not working. This is the regex that I have:
\d+(?!\d+)
And these are some strings, just to give you an idea, and what the regex should match:
ARRAY[123] matches 123
ARRAY[123].ITEM[4] matches 4
B:1000 matches 1000
B:1000.10 matches 10
And so on. The regex matches the numbers, but all of them. I don't get why the negative lookahead is not working. Any one care to explain?
Your regex \d+(?!\d+) says
match any number if it is not immediately followed by a number.
which is incorrect. A number is last if it is not followed (following it anywhere, not just immediately) by any other number.
When translated to regex we have:
(\d+)(?!.*\d)
Rubular Link
I took it this way: you need to make sure the match is close enough to the end of the string; close enough in the sense that only non-digits may intervene. What I suggest is the following:
/(\d+)\D*\z/
\z at the end means that that is the end of the string.
\D* before that means that an arbitrary number of non-digits can intervene between the match and the end of the string.
(\d+) is the matching part. It is in parenthesis so that you can pick it up, as was pointed out by Cameron.
You can use
.*(?:\D|^)(\d+)
to get the last number; this is because the matcher will gobble up all the characters with .*, then backtrack to the first non-digit character or the start of the string, then match the final group of digits.
Your negative lookahead isn't working because on the string "1 3", for example, the 1 is matched by the \d+, then the space matches the negative lookahead (since it's not a sequence of one or more digits). The 3 is never even looked at.
Note that your example regex doesn't have any groups in it, so I'm not sure how you were extracting the number.
I still had issues with managing the capture groups
(for example, if using Inline Modifiers (?imsxXU)).
This worked for my purposes -
.(?:\D|^)\d(\D)