Please help with below
I need match only words where counting of characters same
for example same counting for a b c
abc ///match 1 (abc)
aabbcc match 2(abc)
adabb not mach 2(ab)
ttt match 0(abc)
Why are you using regular expressions for this? Regular expressions are the right tool for some jobs but they are overused where plain old string processing would do the trick, possibly with greater clarity or efficiency. Here's a sample implemented in Python:
def matchCount(inputString, lettersToMatch, count) :
matches = []
wordsArray = inputString.split()
for word in wordsArray:
letterCounts = {}
for letter in word:
if letter in letterCounts:
letterCounts[letter] += 1
else:
letterCounts[letter] = 1
allCorrect = True
for letter in lettersToMatch:
if letter !in letterCounts:
allCorrect = False
if letterCounts[letter] != count:
allCorrect = False
if !allCorrect:
break
if allCorrect:
matches.append(word)
return matches
You should use a recursive regular expression.
Below is the Perl code for matching the same number or 0s and 1s
$regex = qr/0(??{$regex})*1/;
NB: for more backround, please refer to Recursive Regular Expressions on Peteris Krumins's blog.
Related
Is it possible to write a regex pattern to match abc where each letter is not literal but means that text like xyz (but not xxy) would be matched? I am able to get as far as (.)(?!\1) to match a in ab but then I am stumped.
After getting the answer below, I was able to write a routine to generate this pattern. Using raw re patterns is much faster than converting both the pattern and a text to canonical form and then comaring them.
def pat2re(p, know=None, wild=None):
"""return a compiled re pattern that will find pattern `p`
in which each different character should find a different
character in a string. Characters to be taken literally
or that can represent any character should be given as
`know` and `wild`, respectively.
EXAMPLES
========
Characters in the pattern denote different characters to
be matched; characters that are the same in the pattern
must be the same in the text:
>>> pat = pat2re('abba')
>>> assert pat.search('maccaw')
>>> assert not pat.search('busses')
The underlying pattern of the re object can be seen
with the pattern property:
>>> pat.pattern
'(.)(?!\\1)(.)\\2\\1'
If some characters are to be taken literally, list them
as known; do the same if some characters can stand for
any character (i.e. are wildcards):
>>> a_ = pat2re('ab', know='a')
>>> assert a_.search('ad') and not a_.search('bc')
>>> ab_ = pat2re('ab*', know='ab', wild='*')
>>> assert ab_.search('abc') and ab_.search('abd')
>>> assert not ab_.search('bad')
"""
import re
# make a canonical "hash" of the pattern
# with ints representing pattern elements that
# must be unique and strings for wild or known
# values
m = {}
j = 1
know = know or ''
wild = wild or ''
for c in p:
if c in know:
m[c] = '\.' if c == '.' else c
elif c in wild:
m[c] = '.'
elif c not in m:
m[c] = j
j += 1
assert j < 100
h = tuple(m[i] for i in p)
# build pattern
out = []
last = 0
for i in h:
if type(i) is int:
if i <= last:
out.append(r'\%s' % i)
else:
if last:
ors = '|'.join(r'\%s' % i for i in range(1, last + 1))
out.append('(?!%s)(.)' % ors)
else:
out.append('(.)')
last = i
else:
out.append(i)
return re.compile(''.join(out))
You may try:
^(.)(?!\1)(.)(?!\1|\2).$
Demo
Here is an explanation of the regex pattern:
^ from the start of the string
(.) match and capture any first character (no restrictions so far)
(?!\1) then assert that the second character is different from the first
(.) match and capture any (legitimate) second character
(?!\1|\2) then assert that the third character does not match first or second
. match any valid third character
$ end of string
I'm attempting to create a regex pattern that will only match strings containing only periods (.) with a length that is a power of 3. Obviously I could manually repeat length checks against powers of 3 up until the length is no longer feasible, but I would prefer a short pattern.
I wrote this python method to help explain what I want to do:
#n = length
def check(n):
if n == 1:
return True
elif n / 3 != n / 3.0:
return False
else:
return check(n / 3)
To clarify, the regex should only match ., ..., ........., ..........................., (length 1, 3, 9, 27) etc.
I've read up on regex recursion, making use of (?R) but I haven't been able to put anything together that works correctly.
Is this possible?
It can be done using regex (handles any character, not just period):
def length_power_three(string):
regex = r"."
while True:
match = re.match(regex, string)
if not match:
return False
if match.group(0) == string:
return True
regex = r"(?:" + regex + r"){3}"
But I understand you really want to know if it can be done with a single regex.
UPDATE
I forgot that you asked for a recursive solution:
def length_power_three(string, regex = r"."):
match = re.match(regex, string)
if not match:
return False
if match.group(0) == string:
return True
return length_power_three(string, r"(?:" + regex + r"){3}")
How to match any character which repeats n times?
Example:
for input: abcdbcdcdd
for n=1: ..........
for n=2: .........
for n=3: .. .....
for n=4: . . ..
for n=5: no matches
After several hours my best is this expression
(\w)(?=(?:.*\1){n-1,}) //where n is variable
which uses lookahead. However the problem with this expression is this:
for input: abcdbcdcdd
for n=1 ..........
for n=2 ... .. .
for n=3 .. .
for n=4 .
for n=5 no matches
As you can see, when lookahead matches for a character, let's look for n=4 line, d's lookahead assertion satisfied and first d matched by regex. But remaining d's are not matched because they don't have 3 more d's ahead of them.
I hope I stated the problem clearly. Hoping for your solutions, thanks in advance.
let's look for n=4 line, d's lookahead assertion satisfied
and first d matched by regex.
But remaining d's are not matched because they don't have 3 more d's
ahead of them.
And obviously, without regex, this is a very simple string manipulation
problem. I'm trying to do this with and only with regex.
As with any regex implementation, the answer depends on the regex flavour. You could create a solution with .net regex engine, because it allows variable width lookbehinds.
Also, I'll provide a more generalized solution below for perl-compatible/like regex flavours.
.net Solution
As #PetSerAl pointed out in his answer, with variable width lookbehinds, we can assert back to the beggining of the string, and check there are n occurrences.
ideone demo
regex module in Python
You can implement this solution in python, using the regex module by Matthew Barnett, which also allows variable-width lookbehinds.
>>> import regex
>>> regex.findall( r'(\w)(?<=(?=(?>.*?\1){2})\A.*)', 'abcdbcdcdd')
['b', 'c', 'd', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'c', 'd', 'd']
>>> regex.findall( r'(\w)(?<=(?=(?>.*?\1){3})\A.*)', 'abcdbcdcdd')
['c', 'd', 'c', 'd', 'c', 'd', 'd']
>>> regex.findall( r'(\w)(?<=(?=(?>.*?\1){4})\A.*)', 'abcdbcdcdd')
['d', 'd', 'd', 'd']
>>> regex.findall( r'(\w)(?<=(?=(?>.*?\1){5})\A.*)', 'abcdbcdcdd')
[]
Generalized Solution
In pcre or any of the "perl-like" flavours, there is no solution that would actually return a match for every repeated character, but we could create one, and only one, capture for each character.
Strategy
For any given n, the logic involves:
Early matches: Match and capture every character followed by at least n more occurences.
Final captures:
Match and capture a character followed by exactly n-1 occurences, and
also capture every one of the following occurrences.
Example
for n = 3
input = abcdbcdcdd
The character c is Matched only once (as final), and the following 2 occurrences are also Captured in the same match:
abcdbcdcdd
M C C
and the character d is (early) Matched once:
abcdbcdcdd
M
and (finally) Matched one more time, Capturing the rest:
abcdbcdcdd
M CC
Regex
/(\w) # match 1 character
(?:
(?=(?:.*?\1){≪N≫}) # [1] followed by other ≪N≫ occurrences
| # OR
(?= # [2] followed by:
(?:(?!\1).)*(\1) # 2nd occurence <captured>
(?:(?!\1).)*(\1) # 3rd occurence <captured>
≪repeat previous≫ # repeat subpattern (n-1) times
# *exactly (n-1) times*
(?!.*?\1) # not followed by another occurence
)
)/xg
For n =
/(\w)(?:(?=(?:.*?\1){2})|(?=(?:(?!\1).)*(\1)(?!.*?\1)))/g
demo
/(\w)(?:(?=(?:.*?\1){3})|(?=(?:(?!\1).)*(\1)(?:(?!\1).)*(\1)(?!.*?\1)))/g
demo
/(\w)(?:(?=(?:.*?\1){4})|(?=(?:(?!\1).)*(\1)(?:(?!\1).)*(\1)(?:(?!\1).)*(\1)(?!.*?\1)))/g
demo
... etc.
Pseudocode to generate the pattern
// Variables: N (int)
character = "(\w)"
early_match = "(?=(?:.*?\1){" + N + "})"
final_match = "(?="
for i = 1; i < N; i++
final_match += "(?:(?!\1).)*(\1)"
final_match += "(?!.*?\1))"
pattern = character + "(?:" + early_match + "|" + final_match + ")"
JavaScript Code
I'll show an implementation using javascript because we can check the result here (and if it works in javascript, it works in any perl-compatible regex flavour, including .net, java, python, ruby, perl, and all languages that implemented pcre, among others).
var str = 'abcdbcdcdd';
var pattern, re, match, N, i;
var output = "";
// We'll show the results for N = 2, 3 and 4
for (N = 2; N <= 4; N++) {
// Generate pattern
pattern = "(\\w)(?:(?=(?:.*?\\1){" + N + "})|(?=";
for (i = 1; i < N; i++) {
pattern += "(?:(?!\\1).)*(\\1)";
}
pattern += "(?!.*?\\1)))";
re = new RegExp(pattern, "g");
output += "<h3>N = " + N + "</h3><pre>Pattern: " + pattern + "\nText: " + str;
// Loop all matches
while ((match = re.exec(str)) !== null) {
output += "\nPos: " + match.index + "\tMatch:";
// Loop all captures
x = 1;
while (match[x] != null) {
output += " " + match[x];
x++;
}
}
output += "</pre>";
}
document.write(output);
Python3 code
As requested by the OP, I'm linking to a Python3 implementation in ideone.com
Regular expressions (and finite automata) are not able to count to arbitrary integers. They can only count to a predefined integer and fortunately this is your case.
Solving this problem is much easier if we first construct a nondeterministic finite automata (NFA) ad then convert it to regular expression.
So the following automata for n=2 and input alphabet = {a,b,c,d}
will match any string that has exactly 2 repetitions of any char. If no character has 2 repetitions (all chars appear less or more that two times) the string will not match.
Converting it to regex should look like
"^([^a]*a[^a]*a[^a]*)|([^b]*b[^b]*b[^b]*)|([^b]*c[^c]*c[^C]*)|([^d]*d[^d]*d[^d]*)$"
This can get problematic if the input alphabet is big, so that regex should be shortened somehow, but I can't think of it right now.
With .NET regular expressions you can do following:
(\w)(?<=(?=(?:.*\1){n})^.*) where n is variable
Where:
(\w) — any character, captured in first group.
(?<=^.*) — lookbehind assertion, which return us to the start of the string.
(?=(?:.*\1){n}) — lookahead assertion, to see if string have n instances of that character.
Demo
I would not use regular expressions for this. I would use a scripting language such as python. Try out this python function:
alpha = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
def get_matched_chars(n, s):
s = s.lower()
return [char for char in alpha if s.count(char) == n]
The function will return a list of characters, all of which appear in the string s exactly n times. Keep in mind that I only included letters in my alphabet. You can change alpha to represent anything that you want to get matched.
Is it possible to do a find/replace using regular expressions on a string of dna such that it only considers every 3 characters (a codon of dna) at a time.
for example I would like the regular expression to see this:
dna="AAACCCTTTGGG"
as this:
AAA CCC TTT GGG
If I use the regular expressions right now and the expression was
Regex.Replace(dna,"ACC","AAA") it would find a match, but in this case of looking at 3 characters at a time there would be no match.
Is this possible?
Why use a regex? Try this instead, which is probably more efficient to boot:
public string DnaReplaceCodon(string input, string match, string replace) {
if (match.Length != 3 || replace.Length != 3)
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException();
var output = new StringBuilder(input.Length);
int i = 0;
while (i + 2 < input.Length) {
if (input[i] == match[0] && input[i+1] == match[1] && input[i+2] == match[2]) {
output.Append(replace);
} else {
output.Append(input[i]);
output.Append(input[i]+1);
output.Append(input[i]+2);
}
i += 3;
}
// pick up trailing letters.
while (i < input.Length) output.Append(input[i]);
return output.ToString();
}
Solution
It is possible to do this with regex. Assuming the input is valid (contains only A, T, G, C):
Regex.Replace(input, #"\G((?:.{3})*?)" + codon, "$1" + replacement);
DEMO
If the input is not guaranteed to be valid, you can just do a check with the regex ^[ATCG]*$ (allow non-multiple of 3) or ^([ATCG]{3})*$ (sequence must be multiple of 3). It doesn't make sense to operate on invalid input anyway.
Explanation
The construction above works for any codon. For the sake of explanation, let the codon be AAA. The regex will be \G((?:.{3})*?)AAA.
The whole regex actually matches the shortest substring that ends with the codon to be replaced.
\G # Must be at beginning of the string, or where last match left off
((?:.{3})*?) # Match any number of codon, lazily. The text is also captured.
AAA # The codon we want to replace
We make sure the matches only starts from positions whose index is multiple of 3 with:
\G which asserts that the match starts from where the previous match left off (or the beginning of the string)
And the fact that the pattern ((?:.{3})*?)AAA can only match a sequence whose length is multiple of 3.
Due to the lazy quantifier, we can be sure that in each match, the part before the codon to be replaced (matched by ((?:.{3})*?) part) does not contain the codon.
In the replacement, we put back the part before the codon (which is captured in capturing group 1 and can be referred to with $1), follows by the replacement codon.
NOTE
As explained in the comment, the following is not a good solution! I leave it in so that others will not fall for the same mistake
You can usually find out where a match starts and ends via m.start() and m.end(). If m.start() % 3 == 0 you found a relevant match.
I have a string 00000001001300000708303939313833313932E2
so, I want to match everything between 708 & E2..
So I wrote:
(?<=708)(.*\n?)(?=E2) - tested in RegExr (it's working)
Now, from that result 303939313833313932 match to get result
(every second number):
099183192
How ?
To match everything between 708 and E2, use:
708(\d+)
if you are sure that there will be only digits. Otherwise try with:
708(.*?)E2
To match every second digit from 303939313833313932, use:
(?:\d(\d))+
use a global replace:
find: \d(\d)
replace: $1
Are you expecting a regular expression answer to this?
You are perhaps better off doing this using string operations in whatever programming language you're using. If you have text = "abcdefghi..." then do output = text[0] + text[2] + text[4]... in a loop, until you run out of characters.
You haven't specified a programming language, but in Python I would do something like:
>>> text = "abcdefghjiklmnop"
>>> for n, char in enumerate(text):
... if n % 2 == 0: #every second char
... print char
...
a
c
e
g
j
k
m
o