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I'm trying to search for the word Gadaffi, which can be spelled in many different ways. What's the best regular expression to search for this?
This is a list of 30 variants:
Gadaffi
Gadafi
Gadafy
Gaddafi
Gaddafy
Gaddhafi
Gadhafi
Gathafi
Ghadaffi
Ghadafi
Ghaddafi
Ghaddafy
Gheddafi
Kadaffi
Kadafi
Kaddafi
Kadhafi
Kazzafi
Khadaffy
Khadafy
Khaddafi
Qadafi
Qaddafi
Qadhafi
Qadhdhafi
Qadthafi
Qathafi
Quathafi
Qudhafi
Kad'afi
My best attempt so far is:
\b[KG]h?add?af?fi$\b
But I still seem to be missing some variants. Any suggestions?
Easy... (Qadaffi|Khadafy|Qadafi|...)... it's self-documented, maintainable, and assuming your regexp engine actually compiles regular expressions (rather than interpreting them), it will compile to the same DFA that a more obfuscated solution would.
Writing compact regular expressions is like using short variable names to speed up a program. It only helps if your compiler is brain-dead.
\b[KGQ]h?add?h?af?fi\b
Arabic transcription is (Wiki says) "Qaḏḏāfī", so maybe adding a Q. And one H ("Gadhafi", as the article (see below) mentions).
Btw, why is there a $ at the end of the regex?
Btw, nice article on the topic:
Gaddafi, Kadafi, or Qaddafi? Why is the Libyan leader’s name spelled so many different ways?.
EDIT
To match all the names in the article you've mentioned later, this should match them all. Let's just hope it won't match a lot of other stuff :D
\b(Kh?|Gh?|Qu?)[aeu](d['dt]?|t|zz|dhd)h?aff?[iy]\b
One interesting thing to note from your list of potential spellings is that there's only 3 Soundex values for the contained list (if you ignore the outlier 'Kazzafi')
G310, K310, Q310
Now, there are false positives in there ('Godby' also is G310), but by combining the limited metaphone hits as well, you can eliminate them.
<?
$soundexMatch = array('G310','K310','Q310');
$metaphoneMatch = array('KTF','KTHF','FTF','KHTF','K0F');
$text = "This is a big glob of text about Mr. Gaddafi. Even using compound-Khadafy terms in here, then we might find Mr Qudhafi to be matched fairly well. For example even with apostrophes sprinkled randomly like in Kad'afi, you won't find false positives matched like godfrey, or godby, or even kabbadi";
$wordArray = preg_split('/[\s,.;-]+/',$text);
foreach ($wordArray as $item){
$rate = in_array(soundex($item),$soundexMatch) + in_array(metaphone($item),$metaphoneMatch);
if ($rate > 1){
$matches[] = $item;
}
}
$pattern = implode("|",$matches);
$text = preg_replace("/($pattern)/","<b>$1</b>",$text);
echo $text;
?>
A few tweaks, and lets say some cyrillic transliteration, and you'll have a fairly robust solution.
Using CPAN module Regexp::Assemble:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use Regexp::Assemble;
my $ra = Regexp::Assemble->new;
$ra->add($_) for qw(Gadaffi Gadafi Gadafy Gaddafi Gaddafy
Gaddhafi Gadhafi Gathafi Ghadaffi Ghadafi
Ghaddafi Ghaddafy Gheddafi Kadaffi Kadafi
Kaddafi Kadhafi Kazzafi Khadaffy Khadafy
Khaddafi Qadafi Qaddafi Qadhafi Qadhdhafi
Qadthafi Qathafi Quathafi Qudhafi Kad'afi);
say $ra->re;
This produces the following regular expression:
(?-xism:(?:G(?:a(?:d(?:d(?:af[iy]|hafi)|af(?:f?i|y)|hafi)|thafi)|h(?:ad(?:daf[iy]|af?fi)|eddafi))|K(?:a(?:d(?:['dh]a|af?)|zza)fi|had(?:af?fy|dafi))|Q(?:a(?:d(?:(?:(?:hd)?|t)h|d)?|th)|u(?:at|d)h)afi))
I think you're over complicating things here. The correct regex is as simple as:
\u0627\u0644\u0642\u0630\u0627\u0641\u064a
It matches the concatenation of the seven Arabic Unicode code points that forms the word القذافي (i.e. Gadaffi).
If you want to avoid matching things that no-one has used (ie avoid tending towards ".+") your best approach would be to create a regular expression that's just all the alternatives (eg. (Qadafi|Kadafi|...)) then compile that to a DFA, and then convert the DFA back into a regular expression. Assuming a moderately sensible implementation that would give you a "compressed" regular expression that's guaranteed not to contain unexpected variants.
If you've got a concrete listing of all 30 possibilities, just concatenate them all together with a bunch of "ors". Then you can be sure that it only matches the exact things you've listed, and no more. Your RE engine will probably be able to optimize in further, and, well, with 30 choices even if it doesn't it's still not a big deal. Trying to fiddle around with manually turning it into a "clever" RE can't possibly turn out better and may turn out worse.
(G|Gh|K|Kh|Q|Qh|Q|Qu)(a|au|e|u)(dh|zz|th|d|dd)(dh|th|a|ha|)(\x27|)(a|)(ff|f)(i|y)
Certainly not the most optimized version, split on syllables to maximize matches while trying to make sure we don't get false positives.
Well since you are matching small words why don't you try a similarity search engine with the Levenshtein distance? You can allow at most k insertions or deletions. This way you can change the distance function to other things that work better for your specific problem. There are many functions available in the simMetrics library.
A possible alternative is the online tool for generate regular expressions from examples http://regex.inginf.units.it.
Give it a chance!
Why not do a mixed approach? Something between a list of all possibilities and a complicated Regex that matches far too much.
Regex is about pattern matching and I can't see a pattern for all variants in the list. Trying to do so, will also find things like "Gazzafy" or "Quud'haffi" which are most probably not a used variant and definitly not on the list.
But I can see patterns for some of the variants, and so I ended up with this:
\b(?:Gheddafi|Gathafi|Kazzafi|Kad'afi|Qadhdhafi|Qadthafi|Qudhafi|Qu?athafi|[KG]h?add?h?aff?[iy]|Qad[dh]?afi)\b
At the beginning I list the ones where I can't see a pattern, then followed by some variants where there are patterns.
See it here on www.rubular.com
I know this is an old question, but...
Neither of these two regexes is the prettiest, but they are optimized and both match ALL the variations in the original post.
"Little Beauty" #1
(?:G(?:a(?:d(?:d(?:af[iy]|hafi)|af(?:f?i|y)|hafi)|thafi)|h(?:ad(?:daf[iy]|af?fi)|eddafi))|K(?:a(?:d(?:['dh]a|af?)|zza)fi|had(?:af?fy|dafi))|Q(?:a(?:d(?:(?:(?:hd)?|t)h|d)?|th)|u(?:at|d)h)afi)
"Little Beauty" #2
(?:(?:Gh|[GK])adaff|(?:(?:Gh|[GKQ])ad|(?:Ghe|(?:[GK]h|[GKQ])a)dd|(?:Gadd|(?:[GKQ]a|Q(?:adh|u))d|(?:Qad|(?:Qu|[GQ])a)t)h|Ka(?:zz|d'))af)i|(?:Khadaff|(?:(?:Kh|G)ad|Gh?add)af)y
Rest in Peace, Muammar.
Just an addendum: you should add "Gheddafi" as alternate spelling. So the RE should be
\b[KG]h?[ae]dd?af?fi$\b
[GQK][ahu]+[dtez]+\'?[adhz]+f{1,2}(i|y)
In parts:
[GQK]
[ahu]+
[dtez]+
\'?
[adhz]+
f{1,2}(i|y)
Note: Just wanted to give a shot at this.
What else starts with Q, G, or K, has a d, z or t in the middle, and ends in "fi" the people actually search for?
/\b[GQK].+[dzt].+fi\b/i
Done.
>>> print re.search(a, "Gadasadasfiasdas") != None
False
>>> print re.search(a, "Gadasadasfi") != None
True
>>> print re.search(a, "Qa'dafi") != None
True
Interesting that I'm getting downvoted. Can someone leave some false positives in the comments?
Related
We take the normal regex processor and pass the input text and the regex phrase to capture the desired output text.
output = the_normal_regex(
input = "12$abc##EF345",
phase = "\d+|[a-zA-Z]+")
= ["12", "abc", "EF", "345"]
Can we inverse the processing that receives both the input text and the output text to produce the adequate regex phrase, specially if the text size is limited to the practical minimum e.g. some dozens of characters? Is any tool available in this regard?
phrase = the_inverse_tool(
input = "12$abc##EF345",
output=["12", "abc", "EF", "345"])
= "\d+|[a-zA-Z]+"
What you're asking appears to be whether there is some algorithm or existing library that takes an input string (like "12$abc##EF345") and a set of matches (like ["12", "abc", "EF", "345"]) and produces an "adequate" regex that would produce the matches, given the input string.
However, what does 'adequate' mean in this context? For your example, a simple answer would be: "12|abc|EF|345". However, it appears you expect something more like the generalised "\d+|[a-zA-Z]+"
Note that your generalisation makes a number of assumptions, for example that words in French, Swedish or Chinese shouldn't be matched. And numbers containing , or . are also not included.
You cannot expect a generalised algorithm to make those kinds of distinctions, as those are essentially problems requiring general AI, understanding the problem domain at an abstract level and coming up with a suitable solution.
Another way of looking at it is: your question is the same as asking if there is some function or library that automates the work of a programmer (specific to the regex language). The answer is: no, not yet anyway, and by the time there is, there won't be people on StackOverflow asking or answering these question, because we'll all be out of a job.
However, some more optimistic viewpoints can be found here: Is it possible for a computer to "learn" a regular expression by user-provided examples?
How can I write a regex to check if a set of words exist in a given string?
For example, I would like to check if a domain name contains "yahoo.com" at the end of it.
'answers.yahoo.com', would be valid.
'yahoo.com.answers', would be wrong. 'yahoo.com' must come in the end.
I got a hint from somewhere that it might be something like this.
"/^[^yahoo.com]$/"
But I am totally new to regex. So please help with this one, then I can learn further.
When asking regex questions, always specify the language or application, too!
From your history it looks like JavaScript / jQuery is most likely.
Anyway, to test that a string ends in "yahoo.com" use /.*yahoo\.com$/i
In JS code:
if (/.*yahoo\.com$/i.test (YOUR_STR) ) {
//-- It's good.
}
To test whether a set of words has at least one match, use:
/word_one|word_two|word_three/
To limit matches to just the most-common, legal sub-domains, ending with "yahoo.com", use:
/^(\w+\.)+yahoo\.com$/
(As a crude, first pass)
For other permutations, please clarify the question.
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I'm thinking of presenting questions in the form of "here is your input: [foo], here are the capture groups/results: [bar]" (and maybe writing a small script to test their answers for my results).
What are some good regex questions to ask? I need everything from beginner questions like "validate a 4 digit number" to "extract postal codes from addresses".
A few that I can think off the top of my head:
Phone numbers in any format e.g. 555-5555, 555 55 55 55, (555) 555-555 etc.
Remove all html tags from text.
Match social security number (Finnish one is easy;)
All IP addresses
IP addresses with shorthand netmask (xx.xx.xx.xx/yy)
There's a bunch of examples of various regular expression techniques over at www.regular-expressions.info - everything for simple literal matching to backreferences and lookahead.
To keep things a bit more interesting than the usual email/phone/url stuff, try looking for more original exercises. Avoid boredom.
For example, have a look at the Forsysth-Edwards Notation which is used for describing a particular board position of a chess game.
Have your students validate and extract all the bits of information from a string like this:
rnbqkbnr/pp1ppppp/8/2p5/4P3/5N2/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKB1R b KQkq - 1 2
Additionaly, have a look at algebraic chess notation, used to describe moves. Extract chess moves out of a piece of text (and make them bold).
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Black now defends his pawn 2...Nc6 3. Bb5 Black threatens c4
Validate phone numbers (extract area code + rest of number with grouping) (Assuming US phone number, otherwise generalize for you style)
Play around with validating email address (probably want to tell the students that this is hugely complicated regular expression but for simple ones it is pretty straight forward)
regexplib.com has a good library you can search through for examples.
H0w about extract first name, middle name, last name, personal suffix (Jr., III, etc.) from a format like:
Smith III, John Paul
How about Reg Ex to remove line breaks and tabs from the input
I would start with the common ones:
validate email
validate phone number
separate the parts of a URL
Be cruel. Tell them parse HTML.
RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags
Are you teaching them theory of finite automata as well?
Here is a good one: parse the addresses of churches correctly from this badly structured format (copy and paste it as text first)
http://www.churchangel.com/WEBNY/newhart.htm
I'm a fan of parsing date strings. Define a few common data formats, as well as time and date-time formats. These are often good exercises because some dates are simple mixes of digits and punctuation. There's a limited degree of freedom in parsing dates.
Just to throw them for a loop, why not reword a question or two to suggest that they write a regular expression to generate data fitting a specific pattern like email addresses, phone numbers, etc.? It's the same thing as validating, but can help them get out of the mindset that regex is just for validation (whereas the data generation tool in visual studio uses regex to randomly generate data).
Rather than teaching examples based from the data set, I would do examples from the perspective of the rule set to get basics across. Give them simple examples to solve that leads them to use ONE of several basic groupings in each solution. Then have a couple of "compound" regex's at the end.
Simple:
s/abc/def/
Spinners and special characters:
s/a\s*b/abc/
Grouping:
s/[abc]/def/
Backreference:
s/ab(c)/def$1/
Anchors:
s/^fred/wilma/
s/$rubble/and betty/
Modifiers:
s/Abcd/def/gi
After this, I would give a few examples illustrating the pitfalls of trying to match html tags or other strings that shouldn't be done with regex's to show the limitations.
Try to think of some tests that don't include ones that can be found with Google.
Asking a email validator should pose no trouble finding..
Try something like a 5 proof test.
Input 5 digit. Sum up each digit must be dividable by five: 12345 = 1+2+3+4+5 = 15 / 5 = 3(.0)
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can best help me systematically modify the "replace" field of a regex search as it encounters each match.
For example, I have an xml file that needs the phrase "id = $number" inserted at regular points in the text, and basically, $number++ each time the regex matches (id = 1, id = 2, etc) until the end of the file.
I know I could just write a bash/perl/python script or some such, but I'd like it to be at least moderately user-friendly so I could teach my intelligent (but less technically-inclined) workers how to use it and make their own modifications. Regexing is not a problem for them.
The closest I've come so far is Notepad++'s Column Editor and 'increase [number] by' function, but with this I have to write a separate regex to align everything, add the increments, and then write another to put it back. Unfortunately, I need to use this function on too many different types of files and 'replace's to make macros feasible.
Ideally, the program would also be available for both Windows & Linux (WINE is acceptable but native is much preferred), and have a 'VI/VIM input' option (if it's a text editor), but these are of secondary importance.
Of course, it'd be nice if there is an OSS solution, and I'd be glad to donate $20-$50 to the developer(s) if it provides the solution I'm looking for.
Apologies for the length, and thanks so much for your help!
emacs (version 22 and later) can do what you're looking for. See Steve Yegge's blog for a really interesting read about it. I think this should work:
M-x replace-regexp
Replace regexp: insert pattern regexp here
Replace regexp with: id = \#
\# is a special metacharacter that gets replaced by the total number of replacements that have occurred so far, starting from 0. If you want the list to start from 1 instead of 0, use the following replacement string:
id = \,(1+ \#)
JEdit can probably help you:
http://www.jedit.org/
you can do all kinds of regex and even bean result based replacing with it.
UltraEdit32 is great and I believe it has the features you need. There is a free 30-day download so you can make sure. :)
I know you want an app available on Windows/Linux, but there's another solution on Mac : TextWrangler, and it's free.
Take a look at UltraEdit32. It's very good. Not free, but available in Windows, Linux and Mac platforms. It has regex based search & replace.
This script should let you do what you want in Vim.
Vim functions can do the incrementing number trick and aren't too hard to write. For example the Vim wiki says how to do this. See also :h sub-replace-\=.
function! Counter()
let i = g:c
let g:c = g:c + 1
return i
endfunction
:let c=1|%s/<\w\+\zs/\=' id="' . Counter() . '"'/g
We've probably left user-friendliness long behind at this point but Vim's Ruby support can do this kind of thing easily too:
:ruby c=0
:rubydo $_.gsub!(/<\w+/){|m| c += 1; m + ' id="' + c.to_s + '"'}
Or Perl:
:perl $c=1
:perldo s/<\w+/$& . ' id="' . $c++ . '"'/eg
To me, this sounds like it might be a job for awk, rather than a job for an editor.
I'm writing a Telnet client of sorts in C# and part of what I have to parse are ANSI/VT100 escape sequences, specifically, just those used for colour and formatting (detailed here).
One method I have is one to find all the codes and remove them, so I can render the text without any formatting if needed:
public static string StripStringFormating(string formattedString)
{
if (rTest.IsMatch(formattedString))
return rTest.Replace(formattedString, string.Empty);
else
return formattedString;
}
I'm new to regular expressions and I was suggested to use this:
static Regex rText = new Regex(#"\e\[[\d;]+m", RegexOptions.Compiled);
However, this failed if the escape code was incomplete due to an error on the server. So then this was suggested, but my friend warned it might be slower (this one also matches another condition (z) that I might come across later):
static Regex rTest =
new Regex(#"(\e(\[([\d;]*[mz]?))?)?", RegexOptions.Compiled);
This not only worked, but was in fact faster to and reduced the impact on my text rendering. Can someone explain to a regexp newbie, why? :)
Do you really want to do run the regexp twice? Without having checked (bad me) I would have thought that this would work well:
public static string StripStringFormating(string formattedString)
{
return rTest.Replace(formattedString, string.Empty);
}
If it does, you should see it run ~twice as fast...
The reason why #1 is slower is that [\d;]+ is a greedy quantifier. Using +? or *? is going to do lazy quantifing. See MSDN - Quantifiers for more info.
You may want to try:
"(\e\[(\d{1,2};)*?[mz]?)?"
That may be faster for you.
I'm not sure if this will help with what you are working on, but long ago I wrote a regular expression to parse ANSI graphic files.
(?s)(?:\e\[(?:(\d+);?)*([A-Za-z])(.*?))(?=\e\[|\z)
It will return each code and the text associated with it.
Input string:
<ESC>[1;32mThis is bright green.<ESC>[0m This is the default color.
Results:
[ [1, 32], m, This is bright green.]
[0, m, This is the default color.]
Without doing detailed analysis, I'd guess that it's faster because of the question marks. These allow the regular expression to be "lazy," and stop as soon as they have enough to match, rather than checking if the rest of the input matches.
I'm not entirely happy with this answer though, because this mostly applies to question marks after * or +. If I were more familiar with the input, it might make more sense to me.
(Also, for the code formatting, you can select all of your code and press Ctrl+K to have it add the four spaces required.)