I have no experience with regular expressions and would love some help and suggestions on a possible solution to deleting parts of file names contained in a csv file.
Problem:
A list of exported file names contains a random unique identifier that I need isolated. The unique identifier has no predictable pattern, however the aspects which need removing do. Each file name ends with one of the following variations:
V, -V, or %20V followed by a random number sequence with possible spaces, additional "-","" and ending with .PDF
examples:
GTD-LVOE-43-0021 V10 0.PDF
GTD-LVOE-43-0021-V34-2.PDF
GTD-LVOE-43-0021_V02_9.PDF
GTD-LVOE-43-0021 V49.9.PDF
Solution:
My plan was to write a script to select of the first occurrence of a V from the end of the string and then delete it and everything to the right of it. Then the file names can be cleaned up by deleting any "-" or "_" and white space that occurs at the end of a string.
Question:
How can I do this with a regular expression and is my line of thinking even close to the right approach to solving this?
REGEX: [\s\-_]V.*?\.PDF
Might do the trick. You'd still need to replace away any leading - and _, but it should get you down the path, hopefully.
This would read as follows..
start with a whitespace, - OR _ followed by a V. Then take everything until you get to the first .PDF
Related
I am using den4b Renamer to rename a lot of files that follow a specific pattern. The program allows me to use RegEx: (https://www.den4b.com/wiki/ReNamer:Regular_Expressions)
I am stuck trying to conjure up an expression for a specific pattern.
My current RegEx:
Expression: ^(com\.)(([\w\s]*\.){0,4})([\w\s]*)$
Replace: \L$1\L$2\u$4
Note: \L and \u transform the sub-expression to upper and lower case as defined in the table below:
Here are a few example strings so you can get an idea of the input:
Android File Transfer.svg
Angular Console.svg
Au.Edu.Uq.Esys.Escript.svg
Avidemux.svg
Blackmagic Fusion8.svg
Broken Sword.svg
Browser360 Beta.svg
Btsync GUI.svg
Buttercup Desktop.svg
Calc.svg
Calibre EBook Edit.svg
Calibre Viewer.svg
Call Of Duty.svg
com.GitHub.Plugarut.Pwned Checker.svg
com.GitHub.Plugarut.Wingpanel Monitor.svg
com.GitHub.Rickybas.Date Countdown.svg
com.GitHub.Spheras.Desktopfolder.svg
com.GitHub.Themix Project.Oomox.svg
com.GitHub.Unrud.Remote Touchpad.svg
com.GitHub.Unrud.Video Downloader.svg
com.GitHub.Weclaw1.Image Roll.svg
com.GitHub.Zelikos.Rannum.svg
com.Gitlab.Miridyan.Mt.svg
com.Inventwithpython.Flippy.svg
com.Neatdecisions.Detwinner.svg
com.Rafaelmardojai.Share Preview.svg
com.Rafaelmardojai.Webfont Kit Generator.svg
Distributor Logo Antix.svg
Distributor Logo Archlabs.svg
Distributor Logo Dragonflybsd.svg
DOSBox.svg
Drawio.svg
Drweb GUI.svg
For this question I am focused on the strings that begin with com.xxx.xxx.
Since I can't only target those names in Renamer, the expression has to "play nice" with the other input file names and correctly leave them alone. That's why I've prefixed my expression with ^(com\.)
What I want:
Transform the entire string to lower case except for the last period separated part of the string.
Strip white space from the entire string.
For instance:
Original: com.GitHub.Alcadica.Develop.svg
After my Regex: com.github.alcadica.Develop.svg
What I want: com.github.alcadica.Develop.svg
This specific file is correctly renamed. What I'm having trouble with are names that have spaces in any part of the string. I can't figure out how to strip whitespace:
Original: com.Belmoussaoui.Read it Later.svg
After my Regex: com.belmoussaoui.Read it Later.svg
What I want: com.belmoussaoui.ReaditLater.svg
Here is a hypothetical example because I couldn't find a file with more than four parts. I want my pattern to be robust enough to handle this:
Original: com.Shatteredpixel.Another Level.Next.Pixel Dungeon.svg
After my Regex: com.shatteredpixel.another level.next.Pixel Dungeon.svg
What I want: com.shatteredpixel.anotherlevel.next.PixelDungeon.svg
Note that since I'm not using any kind of programming language, I don't have access to common string operations like trim, etc. I can, however, stack expressions. But this would create more overhead and since I am renaming thousands of files at a time I'd ideally like to keep it to one find/replace expression.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if I can provide any more information to make this more clear.
Edit:
I got it to work with the following rules:
Really inefficient, but it works. (Thanks to Jeremy in the comments for the idea)
I've done several syntax highlighting files for simple custom formats in the past (even changing the format a bit to be capable of making the syntax file basing on my skills, in effects).
But this time I feel confused and I will appreciate some help.
The file format is (obviously) a text file where every line contain three distinct elements separated by spaces, they can be "symbols" (names containing a series of alphanumerical chars plus hyphens) or "string" (a series of any chars, spaces included, but not pipes).
Strings can be only at start or end of a line, the middle element can be only a symbol. And string are delimited by a pipe at the end if it is the first element and at the start if it is the last element.
But a line can be also all symbols, string first and rest symbols, and string last and rest symbols.
Strings are always followed by a pipe if they are the first element, or
with a pipe as prefix if they are the last element.
Examples:
All symbols
this-is-a-symbol another-one and-another
First string
This is a string potentially containing any char| symbol symbol
Last string
symbol symbol |A string at the end of the line
First and last as strings
This is a string| now-we-have-a-symbol |And here another string
This four examples are the only possibilities available for a correct formatting.
All symbols need to be colored differently, a specific color for first element, a specific color for second, and one for third.
But strings will have one unique different color regardless of position.
If the pipe chars can be "dimmed" with a color similar (not precisely the same) to background this will be a big plus. But I think I can manage this myself.
A line in the file not like the ones showed will have to be highlighted as an error (like red background).
Some help?
ps: stackoverflow apply a sort of syntax highlighting to my examples which can be misleading
I have found a simpler approach than what I initially thought was necessary in terms of regular expressions. At end I just need to match the first element and the last, how can I've not think of that... So this is my solution, it seems to work well for my specifics. It only doesn't highlight bad formatted lines. Good enough for now. Thanks for the patience and the attention.
" Vim syntax file
" Language: ff .txt
if exists("b:current_syntax")
finish
endif
setlocal iskeyword+=:
syn match Asymbol /^[a-zA-Z0-9\-]* /
syn match Csymbol / [a-zA-Z0-9\-]*$/
syn match Astring /^.*| /
syn match Cstring / |.*$/
highlight link Asymbol Constant
highlight link Csymbol Statement
highlight link Astring Include
highlight link Cstring Comment
let b:current_syntax = "ff"
I have a text file in Notepad++ that contains about 66,000 words all in 1 line, and it is a set of 200 "lines" of output that are all unique and placed in 1 line in the basic JSON form {output:[{output1},{output2},...}]}.
There is a set of characters matching the RegEx expression "id":.........,"kind":"track" that occurs about 285 times in total, and I am trying to either single them out, or copy all of them at once.
Basically, without some super complicated RegEx terms, I am stuck because I can't figure out how to highlight all of them at once, and also the Remove Unbookmarked Lines feature does not apply because this is all in one line. I have only managed to be able to Mark every single occurrence.
So does this require a large number of steps to get the file into multiple lines and work from there, or is there something else I am missing?
Edit: I have come up with a set of Macro schemes that make the process of doing this manually work much faster. It's another alternative but still takes a few steps and quite some time.
Edit 2: I intended there to be an answer for actually just highlighting the different sections all at once, but I guess that it not possible. The answer here turns out to be more useful in my case, allowing me to have a list of IDs without everything else.
You seem to already have a regex which matches single instances of your pattern, so assuming it works and that we must use Notepad++ for this:
Replace .*?("id":.........,"kind":"track").*?(?="id".........,"kind":"track"|$) with \1.
If this textfile is valid JSON, this opens you up to other, non-notepad++ options, like using Python with the json module.
Edited to remove unnecessary steps
First, I'm using EditPadPro for my regex cleaning, so any answers given should work within that environment.
I get a large spreadsheet full of data that I have to clean every day. I've managed to get it down to a couple of different regexes that I run, and this works... but I'm curious to see if it's possible to reduce down to a single regex.
Here is some sample data:
3-CPC_114851_70095_70095_CAN-bre
3-CPC_114851_70095_70095_CAN
b11-ao1-113775-bre
b7-ao-114441
b7-ao-114441-bre
b7-ao1-114441
b7-ao1-114441-bre
http://go.nlvid.com/results1/?http://bo
go.nlv/results1/?click
b4-sm-1359
b6-sm-1356-bre
1359_195_1453814569-bre
1356_104_1456856729
b15-rad-8905
b15-rad-8905-bre
Here is how the above data needs to end up:
114851-bre
114851
113775-bre
114441
114441-bre
114441
114441-bre
http://go.nlvid.com/results1/
go.nlv/results1/
sm-1359
sm-1356-bre
sm-1359-bre
sm-1356
rad-8905
rad-8905-bre
So, there are numerous rules, such as:
In cases of more than 2 underscores, the result needs to contain only the value immediately after the first underscore, and everything from the dash onwards.
In cases where the string contains "-ao-", "-ao1-", everything prior to the final numeric string should be removed.
If a question mark is present, everything from the mark onwards should be removed.
If the string contains "-sm-" or "-rad-", everything prior to those alpha strings should be removed.
If the string contains 2 underscores, averything after the first numeric string up to a dash
(if present) should be removed, and the string "sm-" should be prepended.
Additionally there is other data that must be left untouched, including but not limited to:
113535|24905|24905
as well as many variations on this pattern of xxxxxx|yyyyy|zzzzz (and not always those string lengths)
This may be asking way too much of regex, I'm not sure as I'm not great with it. But I've seen some pretty impressive things done with it, so I thought I'd put this out to the community and see what you come back with.
Jonathan, I can wrap all of those into one regex, except the last one (where you prepend sm- to a string that does not contain sm). It is not possible in this context, because we cannot capture "sm" to reuse in the replacement, and because there is no "conditional replacement" syntax in EPP.
That being said, you can achieve what you want in EPP with two regexes and one macro to chain the two.
Here is how.
The solution below is tested in EPP.
Regex 1
Press Ctrl + Sh + F to enter Search / Replace mode
Enter the following Search and Replace in the appropriate boxes
At the top right of the Search bar, click the Favorite Searches pull-down, select "Add", give it a name, e.g. Regex 1
Search:
(?mx)^
(?=(?:[^_\r\n]*?_){3})[^_\r\n]+?_([^_\r\n]+)[^-\r\n]+(-[^\r\n]+)?
|
[^\r\n]*?-ao1?-\D*([^\r\n]+)
|
([^\r\n?]*)(?=\?)[^\r\n]+
|
[^\r\n]*?-((?:sm|rad)-[^\r\n]+)
Replace:
\1\2\3\4\5
Regex 2
Same 1-2-3 steps as above.
Search
^(?!(?:[^_\r\n]*?_){3})(?=(?:[^_\r\n]*?_){2})(\d+)(?:[^-\r\n]+(-[^\r\n]+)?)
Replace
sm-\1\2
Chaining Regex 1 and Regex 2
Top menu: Macros, Record Macro, give it a name.
Click the Favorite searches pulldown, select Regex 1
Hit Replace All.
Click the Favorite searches pulldown, select Regex 2
Hit Replace All.
Macros, Stop recording.
Whenever you want to do your sequence of replacements, pull it by name under the Macros menu.
Testing This
I have tested my "Jonathan macro" on your input. Here is the result:
114851-bre
114851
113775-bre
114441
114441-bre
114441
114441-bre
http://go.nlvid.com/results1/
go.nlv/results1/
sm-1359
sm-1356-bre
sm-1359-bre
sm-1356
rad-8905
rad-8905-bre
Try this:
Toggle the Search Panel : SHIFT+CTRL+F
SEARCH: .*?((?:sm-|rad-)?(?:(?:\d+|[\w\.]+\/.*?))(?:-\w+)?$)
REPLACE: $1
Check REGEX and WORDS
Click Replace All or Hit CTRL+ALT+F3
Check the image below:
I recently discussed editors with a co-worker. He uses one of the less popular editors and I use another (I won't say which ones since it's not relevant and I want to avoid an editor flame war). I was saying that I didn't like his editor as much because it doesn't let you do find/replace with regular expressions.
He said he's never wanted to do that, which was surprising since it's something I find myself doing all the time. However, off the top of my head I wasn't able to come up with more than one or two examples. Can anyone here offer some examples of times when they've found regex find/replace useful in their editor? Here's what I've been able to come up with since then as examples of things that I've actually had to do:
Strip the beginning of a line off of every line in a file that looks like:
Line 25634 :
Line 632157 :
Taking a few dozen files with a standard header which is slightly different for each file and stripping the first 19 lines from all of them all at once.
Piping the result of a MySQL select statement into a text file, then removing all of the formatting junk and reformatting it as a Python dictionary for use in a simple script.
In a CSV file with no escaped commas, replace the first character of the 8th column of each row with a capital A.
Given a bunch of GDB stack traces with lines like
#3 0x080a6d61 in _mvl_set_req_done (req=0x82624a4, result=27158) at ../../mvl/src/mvl_serv.c:850
strip out everything from each line except the function names.
Does anyone else have any real-life examples? The next time this comes up, I'd like to be more prepared to list good examples of why this feature is useful.
Just last week, I used regex find/replace to convert a CSV file to an XML file.
Simple enough to do really, just chop up each field (luckily it didn't have any escaped commas) and push it back out with the appropriate tags in place of the commas.
Regex make it easy to replace whole words using word boundaries.
(\b\w+\b)
So you can replace unwanted words in your file without disturbing words like Scunthorpe
Yesterday I took a create table statement I made for an Oracle table and converted the fields to setString() method calls using JDBC and PreparedStatements. The table's field names were mapped to my class properties, so regex search and replace was the perfect fit.
Create Table text:
...
field_1 VARCHAR2(100) NULL,
field_2 VARCHAR2(10) NULL,
field_3 NUMBER(8) NULL,
field_4 VARCHAR2(100) NULL,
....
My Regex Search:
/([a-z_])+ .*?,?/
My Replacement:
pstmt.setString(1, \1);
The result:
...
pstmt.setString(1, field_1);
pstmt.setString(1, field_2);
pstmt.setString(1, field_3);
pstmt.setString(1, field_4);
....
I then went through and manually set the position int for each call and changed the method to setInt() (and others) where necessary, but that worked handy for me. I actually used it three or four times for similar field to method call conversions.
I like to use regexps to reformat lists of items like this:
int item1
double item2
to
public void item1(int item1){
}
public void item2(double item2){
}
This can be a big time saver.
I use it all the time when someone sends me a list of patient visit numbers in a column (say 100-200) and I need them in a '0000000444','000000004445' format. works wonders for me!
I also use it to pull out email addresses in an email. I send out group emails often and all the bounced returns come back in one email. So, I regex to pull them all out and then drop them into a string var to remove from the database.
I even wrote a little dialog prog to apply regex to my clipboard. It grabs the contents applies the regex and then loads it back into the clipboard.
One thing I use it for in web development all the time is stripping some text of its HTML tags. This might need to be done to sanitize user input for security, or for displaying a preview of a news article. For example, if you have an article with lots of HTML tags for formatting, you can't just do LEFT(article_text,100) + '...' (plus a "read more" link) and render that on a page at the risk of breaking the page by splitting apart an HTML tag.
Also, I've had to strip img tags in database records that link to images that no longer exist. And let's not forget web form validation. If you want to make a user has entered a correct email address (syntactically speaking) into a web form this is about the only way of checking it thoroughly.
I've just pasted a long character sequence into a string literal, and now I want to break it up into a concatenation of shorter string literals so it doesn't wrap. I also want it to be readable, so I want to break only after spaces. I select the whole string (minus the quotation marks) and do an in-selection-only replace-all with this regex:
/.{20,60} /
...and this replacement:
/$0"ΒΆ + "/
...where the pilcrow is an actual newline, and the number of spaces varies from one incident to the next. Result:
String s = "I recently discussed editors with a co-worker. He uses one "
+ "of the less popular editors and I use another (I won't say "
+ "which ones since it's not relevant and I want to avoid an "
+ "editor flame war). I was saying that I didn't like his "
+ "editor as much because it doesn't let you do find/replace "
+ "with regular expressions.";
The first thing I do with any editor is try to figure out it's Regex oddities. I use it all the time. Nothing really crazy, but it's handy when you've got to copy/paste stuff between different types of text - SQL <-> PHP is the one I do most often - and you don't want to fart around making the same change 500 times.
Regex is very handy any time I am trying to replace a value that spans multiple lines. Or when I want to replace a value with something that contains a line break.
I also like that you can match things in a regular expression and not replace the full match using the $# syntax to output the portion of the match you want to maintain.
I agree with you on points 3, 4, and 5 but not necessarily points 1 and 2.
In some cases 1 and 2 are easier to achieve using a anonymous keyboard macro.
By this I mean doing the following:
Position the cursor on the first line
Start a keyboard macro recording
Modify the first line
Position the cursor on the next line
Stop record.
Now all that is needed to modify the next line is to repeat the macro.
I could live with out support for regex but could not live without anonymous keyboard macros.