Can I shorten this regular expression? - regex

I have the need to check whether strings adhere to a particular ID format.
The format of the ID is as follows:
aBcDe-fghIj-KLmno-pQRsT-uVWxy
A sequence of five blocks of five letters upper case or lower case, separated by one dash.
I have the following regular expression that works:
string idFormat = "[a-zA-Z]{5}[-]{1}[a-zA-Z]{5}[-]{1}[a-zA-Z]{5}[-]{1}[a-zA-Z]{5}[-]{1}[a-zA-Z]{5}";
Note that there is no trailing dash, but the all of the blocks within the ID follow the same format. Therefore, I would like to be able to represent this sequence of four blocks with a trailing dash inside the regular expression and avoid the duplication.
I tried the following, but it doesn't work:
string idFormat = "[[a-zA-Z]{5}[-]{1}]{4}[a-zA-Z]{5}";
How do I shorten this regular expression and get rid of the duplicated parts?
What is the best way to ensure that each block does also not contain any numbers?
Edit:
Thanks for the replies, I now understand the grouping in regular expressions.
I'm running a few tests against the regular expression, the following are relevant:
Test 1: aBcDe-fghIj-KLmno-pQRsT-uVWxy
Test 2: abcde-fghij-klmno-pqrst-uvwxy
With the following regular expression, both tests pass:
^([a-zA-Z]{5}-){4}[a-zA-Z]{5}$
With the next regular expression, test 1 fails:
^([a-z]{5}-){4}[a-z]{5}$
Several answers have said that it is OK to omit the A-Z when using a-z, but in this case it doesn't seem to be working.

You can try:
([a-z]{5}-){4}[a-z]{5}
and make it case insensitive.

If you can set regex options to be case insensitive, you could replace all [a-zA-Z] with just plain [a-z]. Furthermore, [-]{1} can be written as -.
Your grouping should be done with (, ), not with [, ] (although you're correctly using the latter in specifying character sets.
Depending on context, you probably want to throw in ^...$ which matches start and end of string, respectively, to verify that the entire string is a match (i.e. that there are no extra characters).
In javascript, something like this:
/^([a-z]{5}-){4}[a-z]{5}$/i

This works for me, though you might want to check it:
[a-zA-Z]{5}(-[a-zA-Z]{5}){4}
(One group of five letters, followed by [dash+group of five letters] four times)

([a-zA-Z]{5}[-]{1}){4}[a-zA-Z]{5}

Try
string idFormat = "([a-zA-Z]{5}[-]{1}){4}[a-zA-Z]{5}";
I.e. you basically replace your brackets by parentheses. Brackets are not meant for grouping but for defining a class of accepted characters.
However, be aware that with shortened versions, you can use the expression for validating the string, but not for analyzing it. If you want to process the 5 groups of characters, you will want to put them in 5 groups:
string idFormat =
"([a-zA-Z]{5})-([a-zA-Z]{5})-([a-zA-Z]{5})-([a-zA-Z]{5})-([a-zA-Z]{5})";
so you can address each group and process it.

Related

Regex to match(extract) string between dot(.)

I want to select some string combination (with dots(.)) from a very long string (sql). The full string could be a single line or multiple line with new line separator, and this combination could be in start (at first line) or a next line (new line) or at both place.
I need help in writing a regex for it.
Examples:
String s = I am testing something like test.test.test in sentence.
Expected output: test.test.test
Example2 (real usecase):
UPDATE test.table
SET access = 01
WHERE access IN (
SELECT name FROM project.dataset.tablename WHERE name = 'test' GROUP BY 1 )
Expected output: test.table and project.dataset.tablename
, can I also add some prefix or suffix words or space which should be present where ever this logic gets checked. In above case if its update regex should pick test.table, but if the statement is like select test.table regex should not pick it up this combinations and same applies for suffix.
Example3: This is to illustrate the above theory.
INS INTO test.table
SEL 'abcscsc', wu_id.Item_Nbr ,1
FROM test.table as_t
WHERE as_t.old <> 0 AND as_t.date = 11
AND (as_t.numb IN ('11') )
Expected Output: test.table, test.table (Key words are INTO and FROM)
Things Not Needed in selection:as_t.numb, as_t.old, as_t.date
If I get the regex I can use in program to extract this word.
Note: Before and after string words to the combination could be anything like update, select { or(, so we have to find the occurrence of words which are joined together with .(dot) and all the number of such occurrence.
I tried something like this:
(?<=.)(.?)(?=.)(.?) -: This only selected the word between two .dot and not all.
.(?<=.)(.?)(?=.)(.?). - This everything before and after.
To solve your initial problem, we can just use some negation. Here's the pattern I came up with:
[^\s]+\.[^\s]+
[^ ... ] Means to make a character class including everything except for what's between the brackets. In this case, I put \s in there, which matches any whitespace. So [^\s] matches anything that isn't whitespace.
+ Is a quantifier. It means to find as many of the preceding construct as you can without breaking the match. This would happily match everything that's not whitespace, but I follow it with a \., which matches a literal .. The \ is necessary because . means to match any character in regex, so we need to escape it so it only has its literal meaning. This means there has to be a . in this group of non-whitespace characters.
I end the pattern with another [^\s]+, which matches everything after the . until the next whitespace.
Now, to solve your secondary problem, you want to make this match only work if it is preceded by a given keyword. Luckily, regex has a construct almost specifically for this case. It's called a lookbehind. The syntax is (?<= ... ) where the ... is the pattern you want to look for. Using your example, this will only match after the keywords INTO and FROM:
(?<=(?:INTO|FROM)\s)[^\s]+\.[^\s]+
Here (?:INTO|FROM) means to match either the text INTO or the text FROM. I then specify that it should be followed by a whitespace character with \s. One possible problem here is that it will only match if the keywords are written in all upper case. You can change this behavior by specifying the case insensitive flag i to your regex parser. If your regex parser doesn't have a way to specify flags, you can usually still specify it inline by putting (?i) in front of the pattern, like so:
(?i)(?<=(?:INTO|FROM)\s)[^\s]+\.[^\s]+
If you are new to regex, I highly recommend using the www.regex101.com website to generate regex and learn how it works. Don't forget to check out the code generator part for getting the regex code based on the programming language you are using, that's a cool feature.
For your question, you need a regex that understands any word character \w that matches between 0 and unlimited times, followed by a dot, followed by another series of word character that repeats between 0 and unlimited times.
So here is my solution to your question:
Your regex in JavaScript:
const regex = /([\w][.][\w])+/gm;
in Java:
final String regex = "([\w][.][\w])+";
in Python:
regex = r"([\w][.][\w])+"
in PHP:
$re = '/([\w][.][\w])+/m';
Note that: this solution is written for your use case (to be used for SQL strings), because now if you have something like '.word' or 'word..word', it will still catch it which I assume you don't have a string like that.
See this screenshot for more details

Interesting easy looking Regex

I am re-phrasing my question to clear confusions!
I want to match if a string has certain letters for this I use the character class:
[ACD]
and it works perfectly!
but I want to match if the string has those letter(s) 2 or more times either repeated or 2 separate letters
For example:
[AKL] should match:
ABCVL
AAGHF
KKUI
AKL
But the above should not match the following:
ABCD
KHID
LOVE
because those are there but only once!
that's why I was trying to use:
[ACD]{2,}
But it's not working, probably it's not the right Regex.. can somebody a Regex guru can help me solve this puzzle?
Thanks
PS: I will use it on MYSQL - a differnt approach can also welcome! but I like to use regex for smarter and shorter query!
To ensure that a string contains at least two occurencies in a set of letters (lets say A K L as in your example), you can write something like this:
[AKL].*[AKL]
Since the MySQL regex engine is a DFA, there is no need to use a negated character class like [^AKL] in place of the dot to avoid backtracking, or a lazy quantifier that is not supported at all.
example:
SELECT 'KKUI' REGEXP '[AKL].*[AKL]';
will return 1
You can follow this link that speaks on the particular subject of the LIKE and the REGEXP features in MySQL.
If I understood you correctly, this is quite simple:
[A-Z].*?[A-Z]
This looks for your something in your set, [A-Z], and then lazily matches characters until it (potentially) comes across the set, [A-Z], again.
As #Enigmadan pointed out, a lazy match is not necessary here: [A-Z].*[A-Z]
The expression you are using searches for characters between 2 and unlimited times with these characters ACDFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXZ.
However, your RegEx expression is excluding Y (UVWXZ])) therefore Z cannot be found since it is not surrounded by another character in your expression and the same principle applies to B ([ACD) also excluded in you RegEx expression. For example Z and A would match in an expression like ZABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZA
If those were not excluded on purpose probably better can be to use ranges like [A-Z]
If you want 2 or more of a match on [AKL], then you may use just [AKL] and may have match >= 2.
I am not good at SQL regex, but may be something like this?
check (dbo.RegexMatch( ['ABCVL'], '[AKL]' ) >= 2)
To put it in simple English, use [AKL] as your regex, and check the match on the string to be greater than 2. Here's how I would do in Java:
private boolean search2orMore(String string) {
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("[ACD]").matcher(string);
int counter = 0;
while (matcher.find())
{
counter++;
}
return (counter >= 2);
}
You can't use [ACD]{2,} because it always wants to match 2 or more of each characters and will fail if you have 2 or more matching single characters.
your question is not very clear, but here is my trial pattern
\b(\S*[AKL]\S*[AKL]\S*)\b
Demo
pretty sure this should work in any case
(?<l>[^AKL\n]*[AKL]+[^AKL\n]*[AKL]+[^AKL\n]*)[\n\r]
replace AKL for letters you need can be done very easily dynamicly tell me if you need it
Is this what you are looking for?
".*(.*[AKL].*){2,}.*" (without quotes)
It matches if there are at least two occurences of your charactes sorrounded by anything.
It is .NET regex, but should be same for anything else
Edit
Overall, MySQL regular expression support is pretty weak.
If you only need to match your capture group a minimum of two times, then you can simply use:
select * from ... where ... regexp('([ACD].*){2,}') #could be `2,` or just `2`
If you need to match your capture group more than two times, then just change the number:
select * from ... where ... regexp('([ACD].*){3}')
#This number should match the number of matches you need
If you needed a minimum of 7 matches and you were using your previous capture group [ACDF-KM-XZ]
e.g.
select * from ... where ... regexp('([ACDF-KM-XZ].*){7,}')
Response before edit:
Your regex is trying to find at least two characters from the set[ACDFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXZ].
([ACDFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXZ]){2,}
The reason A and Z are not being matched in your example string (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ) is because you are looking for two or more characters that are together that match your set. A is a single character followed by a character that does not match your set. Thus, A is not matched.
Similarly, Z is a single character preceded by a character that does not match your set. Thus, Z is not matched.
The bolded characters below do not match your set
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
If you were to do a global search in the string, only the italicized characters would be matched:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Regular Expression using vbscript for two numbers: not valid:"$123456789012" and valid: "12345678912"

I wanted to create regular Expression to find the number with 10 or more digits and that number should not have $ symbol in front of it.
Eg:
not valid:$123456789012 and valid: 12345678912.
Apart from this I have more validations for example finding number pattern: 3digits - 4digits, 3digits - 4digits - 5digits.
But for now I am able to create pattern for all those but unable to do for $<number>, could you please help.
Sorry for not mentioning in the beginning - this is using vbscript.
Code:
RegularExpressionObject.IgnoreCase = True
RegularExpressionObject.Global = True
RegularExpressionObject.Pattern =
"(([0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4})|([0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{5})|([0-9]{3}-[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{5}-[‌​0-9]{6})|([0-9]{10}))"
'pattern:CCID or 3(digits)-4(digits), 3(digits)-4(digits)-5(digits), 3(digits)-4(digits)-5(digits)-6(digits), 10digts and above number
Set Matches = RegularExpressionObject.Execute(Rescomts)
If (Matches.Count <> 0) Then
In the above code, regular expression pattern 10 digits are allowed, but I wanted to ignore 10 digits starting from $ symbol
As #Sam said, you would probably use a negative look-behind:
(?<!\$)\b[0-9]{10,}\b
Example: http://regex101.com/r/vR3iF6
Depending on the language selected, look-around may not be available. For example, Javascript limits the use of (?<!\$) so you may need to write it as
[^$]\b[0-9]{10,}\b
Example: http://regex101.com/r/oH5uE4
Some languages support \d, which may make your regex look cleaner. Others don't, and you'll need to write [0-9].
EDIT
Per #AlanMoore's suggestion, extraneous characters may also interfere. You might be able to get around this by using \b[^$]\b instead of just a single \b:
\b[^$]\b[0-9]{10,}\b
Example: http://regex101.com/r/lL2bN9
This would get rid of preceding spaces, non-digit characters, etc.
This regular expression seems to work:
^[^\$][0-9]{9,}$

Replacing part of delimited string with R's regex

I have the following list of strings:
name <- c("hsa-miR-555p","hsa-miR-519b-3p","hsa-let-7a")
What I want to do is for each of the above strings
replace the text after second delimiter (-) with "zzz".
Yielding:
hsa-miR-zzz
hsa-miR-zzz
hsa-let-zzz
What's the way to do it?
Might as well use something like:
gsub("^((?:[^-]*-){2}).*", "\\1zzz", name)
(?:[^-]*-) is a non-capturing group which consists of several non-dash characters followed by a single dash character and the {2} just after means this group occurs twice only. Then, match everything else for the replacement. Note I used an anchor just in case to avoid unintended substitutions.
Perhaps something like this:
> gsub("([A-Za-z]+-)([A-Za-z]+-)(.*)", "\\1\\2zzz", name)
[1] "hsa-miR-zzz" "hsa-miR-zzz" "hsa-let-zzz"
There are actually several ways to approach this, depending on how "regular" your expressions actually are. For example, do they all start with "hsa-"? What are the options for the "middle" group? Might there be more than three dashes?

How to match a string that does not end in a certain substring?

how can I write regular expression that dose not contain some string at the end.
in my project,all classes that their names dont end with some string such as "controller" and "map" should inherit from a base class. how can I do this using regular expression ?
but using both
public*.class[a-zA-Z]*(?<!controller|map)$
public*.class*.(?<!controller)$
there isnt any match case!!!
Do a search for all filenames matching this:
(?<!controller|map|anythingelse)$
(Remove the |anythingelse if no other keywords, or append other keywords similarly.)
If you can't use negative lookbehinds (the (?<!..) bit), do a search for filenames that do not match this:
(?:controller|map)$
And if that still doesn't work (might not in some IDEs), remove the ?: part and it probably will - that just makes it a non-capturing group, but the difference here is fairly insignificant.
If you're using something where the full string must match, then you can just prefix either of the above with ^.* to do that.
Update:
In response to this:
but using both
public*.class[a-zA-Z]*(?<!controller|map)$
public*.class*.(?<!controller)$
there isnt any match case!!!
Not quite sure what you're attempting with the public/class stuff there, so try this:
public.*class.*(?<!controller|map)$`
The . is a regex char that means "anything except newline", and the * means zero or more times.
If this isn't what you're after, edit the question with more details.
Depending on your regex implementation, you might be able to use a lookbehind for this task. This would look like
(?<!SomeText)$
This matches any lines NOT having "SomeText" at their end. If you cannot use that, the expression
^(?!.*SomeText$).*$
matches any non-empty lines not ending with "SomeText" as well.
You could write a regex that contains two groups, one consists of one or more characters before controller or map, the other contains controller or map and is optional.
^(.+)(controller|map)?$
With that you may match your string and if there is a group() method in the regex API you use, if group(2) is empty, the string does not contain controller or map.
Check if the name does not match [a-zA-Z]*controller or [a-zA-Z]*map.
finally I did it in this way
public.*class.*[^(controller|map|spec)]$
it worked