I found this regex somewhere online that finds strings in my files that are likely presented to the user for a localization clean-up. However, I have a new task to find specific instances of two words and I thought I could use the same regex. I have tried several combinations but I'm just not good enough at regex to get it right.
Current regex for finding strings:
(?<=text=|label=|prompt=|toolTip=|title=|icon=|String=|Error=|Separator=|Symbol=)(("(?:\.|(\\\")|[^\""\n])*")|('(?:\.|(\\\')|[^\''\n])*'))
But now I want it to also capture if the words: catalog or in stock exist anywhere between the quotes.
Any help would be appreciated.
OK, this should do it, I believe:
(?<=text=|label=|prompt=|toolTip=|title=|icon=|String=|Error=|Separator=|Symbol=)((?:"(?:\.|(\\\")|[^\""\n])*\b(?:catalog|in stock)\b(?:\.|(\\\")|[^\""\n])*")|(?:'(?:\.|(\\\')|[^\''\n])*\b(?:catalog|in stock)\b(?:\.|(\\\')|[^\''\n])*'))
All I did was add \b(?:catalog|in stock)\b in the quote section. For example, for the double-quote section, it used to be this:
"(?:\.|(\\\")|[^\""\n])*"
I.e. any number of non-quote (unless escaped), non-return characters between double-quotes.
Now it is this:
"(?:\.|(\\\")|[^\""\n])*\b(?:catalog|in stock)\b(?:\.|(\\\")|[^\""\n])*"
Which is a double-quote, any number of legal characters as above, "catalog" or "in stock", any number of more legal characters, and a quote.
Related
1. Summary of the problem
I have a csv file where I want to replace normal quotes in text with typographic ones.
It was hard (because HTML is also included), but I have meanwhile created a good regex expression that does just the right thing: in three "capturing groups" I find the left and right quotation marks and the text inside. Replacing then is a piece of cake.
2. Regex engine
I can use the regex engine of Notepad++ (boost) or PCRE2 comaptible, for developping and testing purposes I have used https://regex101.com.
3. What I'm having a hard time with and just can't get right, where I need your help is here:
I want to add a sub condition, in order to find the text in quotes only in certain lines, want to identify these lines by the language, e.g. ENGLISH or FRENCH (see also example in the screenshot).
Screenshot of a sample
The string indicating the language is always in the same line before the text to be found, BUT only the text in quotes (main condition) should be marked after matching the sub condition, so that I will be able to replace them.
It is about a few thousand records in the csv file, in the worst case I could also replace it manually. But I'm pretty sure that this should also work via regex.
4. What I have tried
Different approaches with look arounds and non-capturing groups didn't lead me to the desired result - possibly because I didn't really understand how they work.
An example can be found here: https://regex101.com/r/ketwwm/1
The example can be found here, it only contains the regex expression to match and mark the (three) groups WITHOUT the searched subcondition:
("")([^<>]*?)("")(?=(?:[^>]*?(?:<|$)))
Hopefully anyone in the community could help? (Hopefully I have not missed anything, it's my first post here )
5. Update 03/18/2022: Almost resolved with two slightly different approaches (thank you all!) What is still unsolved ..
Solution of #Thefourthbird (see answer 1)
^(?!.?"ENGLISH")[^"]".*(SKIP)(F)|("")([^<>]?)("")(?=(?:[^>]?(?:<|$)))
Nearly perfect, just missing matches in an HTML section. HTML sections in the csv file are always enclosed by double quotes and may have line feeds (LF). https://regex101.com/r/x5shnx/1
Solution of #Wiktor Stribiżew (see in comments below)
^.?"ENGLISH".?\K("")([^<>]?)("")(?=(?:[^>]?(?:<|$)))
The same with matches in HTML sections, see above. Plus: Doesn't match text in double double quotes if more than one such entry occurs within a text. https://regex101.com/r/I4NTdb/1
Screenshot (only to illustrate)
If you want to match multiple occasions, you can use SKIP matching all lines that do not start with FRENCH:
^"(?!FRENCH")[^"]*".*(*SKIP)(*F)|("")([^<>]*?)("")(?=(?:[^>]*?(?:<|$)))
The pattern matches:
^ Start of string
" Match literally
(?!FRENCH") Negative lookhead, assert not FRENCH" directly to the right
[^"]*" Match any char except " and match "
.*(*SKIP)(*F) Match the rest of the line and skip it
| Or
("")([^<>]*?)("")(?=(?:[^>]*?(?:<|$))) Your current pattern
Regex demo
I need some help with building up my regex.
What I am trying to do is match a specific part of text with unpredictable parts in between the fixed words. An example is the sentence one gets when replying to an email:
On date at time person name has written:
The cursive parts are variable, might contains spaces or a new line might start from this point.
To get this, I built up my regex as such: On[\s\S]+?at[\s\S]+?person[\s\S]+?has written:
Basically, the [\s\S]+? is supposed to fill in any letter, number, space or break/new line as I am unable to predict what could be between the fixed words tha I am sure will always be there.
Now comes the hard part, when I would add the word "On" somewhere in the text above the sentence that I want to match, the regex now matches a much bigger text than I want. This is due to the use of [\s\S]+.
How am I able to make my regex match as less characters as possible? Using "?" before the "+" to make it lazy does not help.
Example is here with words "From - This - Point - Everything:". Cases are ignored.
Correct: https://regexr.com/3jdek.
Wrong because of added "From": https://regexr.com/3jdfc
The regex is to be used in VB.NET
A more real life, with html tags, can be found here. Here, I avoided using [\s\S]+? or (.+)?(\r)?(\n)?(.+?)
Correct: https://regexr.com/3jdd1
Wrong: https://regexr.com/3jdfu after adding certain parts of the regex in the text above. Although, in html, barely possible to occur as the user would never write the matching tag himself, I do want to make sure my regex is correctjust in case
These things are certain: I know with what the part of text starts, no matter where in respect to the entire text, I know with what the part of text ends, and there are specific fixed words that might make the regex more reliable, but they can be ommitted. Any text below the searched part is also allowed to be matched, but no text above may be matched at all
Another example where it goes wrong: https://regexr.com/3jdli. Basically, I have less to go with in this text, so the regex has less tokens to work with. Adding just the first < already makes the regex take too much.
From my own experience, most problems are avoided when making sure I do not use any [\s\S]+? before I did a (\r)?(\n)? first
[\s\S] matches all character because of union of two complementary sets, it is like . with special option /s (dot matches newlines). and regex are greedy by default so the largest match will be returned.
Following correct link, the token just after the shortest match must be geschreven, so another way to write without using lazy expansion, which is more flexible is to prepend the repeated chracter set by a negative lookahead inside loop,
so
<blockquote type="cite" [^>]+?>[^O]+?Op[^h]+?heeft(.+?(?=geschreven))geschreven:
becomes
<blockquote type="cite" [^>]+?>[^O]+?Op[^h]+?heeft((?:(?!geschreven).)+)geschreven:
(?: ) is for non capturing the group which just encapsulates the negative lookahead and the . (which can be replaced by [\s\S])
(?! ) inside is the negative lookahead which ensures current position before next character is not the beginning of end token.
Following comments it can be explicitly mentioned what should not appear in repeating sequence :
From(?:(?!this)[\s\S])+this(?:(?!point)[\s\S])+point(?:(?!everything)[\s\S])+everything:
or
From(?:(?!From|this)[\s\S])+this(?:(?!point)[\s\S])+point(?:(?!everything)[\s\S])+everything:
or
From(?:(?!From|this)[\s\S])+this(?:(?!this|point)[\s\S])+point(?:(?!everything)[\s\S])+everything:
to understand what the technic (?:(?!tokens)[\s\S])+ does.
in the first this can't appear between From and this
in the second From or this can't appear between From and this
in the third this or point can't appear between this and point
etc.
I am struggling to find a solution for matching two successive whole words using Regular Expression. I have a text box where the user can type in their search criteria, enclosed by quotations for exact matches. The quotes and space (if any) are then replaced by RegEx expressions. Here is an example:
User enters: "Apple Orange"
Converted to:
\bApple\W+(?:\w+\W+){1,6}?Orange\b
Then, my RegEx match would be based on this converted criteria. The instructions are from www.regular-expressions.info/near.html
Maybe I am going about this entirely the wrong way? I am using visual studio. Any help is appreciated.
if you want an exact match when a user uses quotes, then you should just remove the quotes and do a straight string comparison (equality, not contains)
update:
Based on comments below, you would just do the same thing as with a single word match:
Single word:
\bApple\b
Double word
\bApple Orange\b
The idea is that the user enters in the search term and you match for exactly that, so you wouldn't be doing pattern matching for the term itself, just the boundaries of it (the \b wrapped around it). There's no reason to touch the search term itself (all that stuff in-between Apple and Orange that you were trying to do) because even the space inbetween the two is part of their search...unless you were wanting to make it a bit flexible..for example, if the user were to enter in "Apple[lots of space here]Orange" to just count that as a single space, then you could do
\bApple\s+Orange\b
..but then you're kind of deviating from the whole "exact match" theme...
Sidenote: You said in your comment that for "CrabApple OrangeCrush" you did not want "Apple Orange" to match. Which is why you use the \b word boundaries. But IMO if it were me, I would allow for that to match. Or at least, offer some kind of option to search for it in that manner.
I want to match two consecutive lines, with the first line having no lower-case letter and the second having lower-case letter(s), e.g.
("3.2 A MEMORY ABSTRACTION: ADDRESS SPACES 177" "#205")
("3.3.1 Paging 187" "#215")
Why would the Regex ^(?!.*[:lower:]).*$\n^(.*[:lower:]).*$ match each of the following two-line examples?
("1.3.3 Disks 24" "#52")
("1.3.4 Tapes 25" "#53")
("1.5.4 Input/Output 41" "#69")
("1.5.5 Protection 42" "#70")
("3.1 NO MEMORY ABSTRACTION 174" "#202")
("3.2 A MEMORY ABSTRACTION: ADDRESS SPACES 177" "#205")
("3.3.1 Paging 187" "#215")
("3.3.2 Page Tables 191" "#219")
Thanks and regards!
ADDED:
For a example such as:
("3.1 NO MEMORY ABSTRACTION 174" "#202")
("3.2 A MEMORY ABSTRACTION: ADDRESS SPACES 177" "#205")
("3.3.1 Paging 187" "#215")
("3.3.2 Page Tables 191" "#219")
How shall I match only the middle two lines not the first three lines or all the four lines?
To use a POSIX "character class" like [:lower:], you have to enclose it in another set of square brackets, like this: [[:lower:]]. (According to POSIX, the outer set of brackets form a bracket expression and [:lower:] is a character class, but to everyone else the outer brackets define a character class and the inner [:lower:] is obsolete.)
Another problem with your regex is that the first part is not required to consume any characters; everything is optional. That means your match can start on the blank line, and I don't think you want that. Changing the second .* to .+ fixes that, but it's just a quick patch.
This regex seems to match your specification:
^(?!.*[[:lower:]]).+\n(?=.*[[:lower:]]).*$
But I'm a little puzzled, because there's nothing in your sample data that matches. Is there supposed to be?
Using Rubular, we can see what's matched by your initial expression, and then, by adding a few excess capturing groups, see why it matches.
Essentially, the negative look-ahead followed by .* will match anything. If you merely want to check that the first line has no lower-case letters, check that explicitly, e.g.
^(?:[^a-z]+)$
Finally, I'd assuming you want the entire second line, you can do this for the second part:
^(.*?(?=[:lower:]).*?)$
Or to match your inital version:
^(.*?(?=[:lower:])).*?$
The reluctant qualifiers (*?) seemed to be necessary to avoid matching across lines.
The final version I ended up with, thus, is:
^(?:[^a-z]+)$\n^(.*?(?=[:lower:]).*?)$
This can be seen in action with your test data here. It only captures the line ("3.2 A MEMORY ABSTRACTION: ADDRESS SPACES 177" "#205").
Obviously, the regex I've used might be quite specific to Ruby, so testing with your regex engine may be somewhat different. There are many easily Google-able online regex tests, I just picked on Rubular since it does a wonderful job of highlighting what is being matched.
Incidentally, if you're using Python, the Python Regex Tool is very helpful for online testing of Python regexes (and it works with the final version I gave above), though I find the output visually less helpful in trouble-shooting.
After thinking about it a little more, Alan Moore's point about [[:lower:]] is spot on, as is his point about how the data would match. Looking back at what I wrote, I got a little too involved in breaking-down the regex and missed something about the problem as described. If you modify the regex I gave above to:
^(?:[^[:lower:]]+)$\n^(.*?(?=[[:lower:]]).*?)$
It matches only the line ("3.3.1 Paging 187" "#215"), which is the only line with lowercase letters following a line with no lowercase letters, as can be seen here. Placing a capturing group in Alan's expression, yielding ^(?!.*[[:lower:]]).+\n((?=.*[[:lower:]]).*)$ likewise captures the same text, though what, exactly, is matched is different.
I still don't have a good solution for matching multiple lines.
I have a bunch of files that look like this:
A.File.With.Dots.Instead.Of.Spaces.Extension
Which I want to transform via a regex into:
A File With Dots Instead Of Spaces.Extension
It has to be in one regex (because I want to use it with Total Commander's batch rename tool).
Help me, regex gurus, you're my only hope.
Edit
Several people suggested two-step solutions. Two steps really make this problem trivial, and I was really hoping to find a one-step solution that would work in TC. I did, BTW, manage to find a one-step solution that works as long as there's an even number of dots in the file name. So I'm still hoping for a silver bullet expression (or a proof/explanation of why one is strictly impossible).
It appears Total Commander's regex library does not support lookaround expressions, so you're probably going to have to replace a number of dots at a time, until there are no dots left. Replace:
([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)$
with
$1 $2 $3.$4
(Repeat the sequence and the number of backreferences for more efficiency. You can go up to $9, which may or may not be enough.)
It doesn't appear there is any way to do it with a single, definitive expression in Total Commander, sorry.
Basically:
/\.(?=.*?\.)//
will do it in pure regex terms. This means, replace any period that is followed by a string of characters (non-greedy) and then a period with nothing. This is a positive lookahead.
In PHP this is done as:
$output = preg_replace('/\.(?=.*?\.)/', '', $input);
Other languages vary but the principle is the same.
Here's one based on your almost-solution:
/\.([^.]*(\.[^.]+$)?)/\1/
This is, roughly, "any dot stuff, minus the dot, and maybe plus another dot stuff at the end of the line." I couldn't quite tell if you wanted the dots removed or turned to spaces - if the latter, change the substitution to " \1" (minus the quotes, of course).
[Edited to change the + to a *, as Helen's below.]
Or substitute all dots with space, then substitute [space][Extension] with .[Extension]
A.File.With.Dots.Instead.Of.Spaces.Extension
to
A File With Dots Instead Of Spaces Extension
to
A File With Dots Instead Of Spaces.Extension
Another pattern to find all dots but the last in a (windows) filename that I've found works for me in Mass File Renamer is:
(?!\.\w*$)\.
I don't know how useful that is to other users, but this page was an early search result and if that had been on here it would have saved me some time.
It excludes the result if it's followed by an uninterrupted sequence of alphanumeric characters leading to the end of the input (filename) but otherwise finds all instances of the dot character.
You can do that with Lookahead. However I don't know which kind of regex support you have.
/\.(?=.*\.)//
Which roughly translates to Any dot /\./ that has something and a dot afterwards. Obviously the last dot is the only one not complying. I leave out the "optionality" of something between dots, because the data looks like something will always be in between and the "optionality" has a performance cost.
Check:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html