After collecting user input for various conditions like
Starts with : /(^#)/
Ends with : /(#$)/
Contains : /#/
Doesn't contains
To make single regex if user enter multiple conditions,
I combine them with "|" so if 1 and 2 given it become /(^#)|(#$)/
This method works so far but,
I'm not able to determine correctly, What should be the regex for the 4th condition? And combining regex this way work?
Update: #(user input) won't be same
for two conditions and not all four
conditions always present but they can
be and in future I might need more
conditions like "is exactly" and "is
exactly not" etc. so, I'm more curious
to know this approach will scale ?
Also there may be issues of user input
cleanup so regex escaped properly, but
that is ignored right now.
Will the conditions be ORed or ANDed together?
Starts with: abc
Ends with: xyz
Contains: 123
Doesn't contain: 456
The OR version is fairly simple; as you said, it's mostly a matter of inserting pipes between individual conditions. The regex simply stops looking for a match as soon as one of the alternatives matches.
/^abc|xyz$|123|^(?:(?!456).)*$/
That fourth alternative may look bizarre, but that's how you express "doesn't contain" in a regex. By the way, the order of the alternatives doesn't matter; this is effectively the same regex:
/xyz$|^(?:(?!456).)*$|123|^abc/
The AND version is more complicated. After each individual regex matches, the match position has to be reset to zero so the next regex has access to the whole input. That means all of the conditions have to be expressed as lookaheads (technically, one of them doesn't have to be a lookahead, I think it expresses the intent more clearly this way). A final .*$ consummates the match.
/^(?=^abc)(?=.*xyz$)(?=.*123)(?=^(?:(?!456).)*$).*$/
And then there's the possibility of combined AND and OR conditions--that's where the real fun starts. :D
Doesn't contain #: /(^[^#]*$)/
Combining works if the intended result of combination is that any of them matching results in the whole regexp matching.
If a string must not contain #, every character must be another character than #:
/^[^#]*$/
This will match any string of any length that does not contain #.
Another possible solution would be to invert the boolean result of /#/.
In my experience with regex you really need to focus on what EXACTLY you are trying to match, rather than what NOT to match.
for example
\d{2}
[1-9][0-9]
The first expression will match any 2 digits....and the second will match 1 digit from 1 to 9 and 1 digit - any digit. So if you type 07 the first expression will validate it, but the second one will not.
See this for advanced reference:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/refadv.html
EDITED:
^((?!my string).)*$ Is the regular expression for does not contain "my string".
1 + 2 + 4 conditions: starts|ends, but not in the middle
/^#[^#]*#?$|^#?[^#]*#$/
is almost the same that:
/^#?[^#]*#?$/
but this one matches any string without #, sample 'my name is hal9000'
Combining the regex for the fourth option with any of the others doesn't work within one regex. 4 + 1 would mean either the string starts with # or doesn't contain # at all. You're going to need two separate comparisons to do that.
Related
The first thing I tried to do, is get the regex matching what I DON'T want. This way, I could just flip it to NOT accept that same input. This is where I came up with the first part of this regex.
Accept all 9 digit numbers, where all 9 digits are identical (without dashes): "^(\d)\1{8}$". This expression works as expected (as seen here: (https://regex101.com/r/Ez8YC3/1)).
The second expression should do the same, with dashes formatted as follows xxx-xx-xxxx: "^(\d)\1{8}$". This expressions works as expected (as seen here: https://regex101.com/r/bodzIX/1).
Now what I want to do at this point, is combine them together to look for BOTH conditions. However when I do that it seems to break, and only match 9 digit numbers that are identical throughout WITH dashes: "^(\d)\1{2}-(\d)\1{1}-(\d)\1{3}$|^(\d)\1{8}$". This can be seen here: https://regex101.com/r/lPnksf/1.
I may be getting a little ahead of myself here, but in order to show my work as much as possible, I also tried flipping those regex separately, which also did not work as expected.
Condition #1 flipped: "^(?!(\d)\1{8})$". Can be seen here: https://regex101.com/r/ed51yk/1.
Condition #2 flipped: "^(?!(\d)\1{2}-(\d)\1{1}-(\d)\1{3})$". Can be seen here: https://regex101.com/r/UYfoMK/1.
I would expect the two expressions (when flipped) to match any 9 digit number (with or without dashes) where all numbers are not identical. How ever this does not happen at all.
This is the final regex that I came up with, which is clearly not doing what I would expect it to: "^(?!(\d)\1{2}-(\d)\1{1}-(\d)\1{3})$|^(?!(\d)\1{8})$". Can be seen here: https://regex101.com/r/9eHhF5/1
At the end of the day, I want to combine these 2 expressions, with this one (that already works as intended): "^(?!000|666|9\d\d)\d{3}-(?!00)\d\d-(?!0000)\d\d\d\d$". Can be seen here: https://regex101.com/r/AdRI8i/1.
I am still pretty new to regex, and really want to understand why I can't simply wrap the condition in (?!...) in order to match the opposite condition.
Thank you in advance
What you want to do is not flip, but reverse the regex logic.
Yes, to reverse the pattern logic, you should use a negative lookahead, but there are caveats.
First, the $ end of string anchor: if it was at the end of the "positive" regex, it must also be moved to the lookahead in the reverse pattern. So, your ^(?!(\d)\1{8})$ regex must be written as ^(?!(\d)\1{8}$). Same goes for your second regex.
Next, mind that each subsequent capturing group gets an incremented ID number, so you cannot keep the same backreferences when you "join" patterns with OR | operator. You must adjust these IDs to reflect their new values in the new regex.
So, you want to match a string that matches ^(?!000|666|9\d\d)\d{3}-(?!00)\d\d-(?!0000)\d\d\d\d$ first (let's note \d\d\d\d = \d{4}), then you can add restrictions with lookaheads:
(?!(\d)\1{8}$) - fails the match if, immediately from the current position, it matches identical 9 digits and then the string end comes
(?!(\d)\2\2-(\d)\2-(\d)\2{3}$) - (note the ID incrementing continuation) fails the match if, immediately from the current position, it matches identical to the first one 3 digits, -, identical 2 digits, -, identical 5 digits, and then the string end comes.
So, to follow your logic, you can use
^(?!(\d)\1{8}$)(?!(\d)\2\2-(\d)\2-(\d)\2{3}$)(?!000|666|9\d\d)\d{3}-(?!00)\d\d-(?!0000)\d{4}$
See the regex demo
As the lookaheads are non-consuming patterns, i.e. the regex index remains at the same position after matching their pattern sequences where it was before, the 3 lookaheads will all be tried at the start of the string (see the ^ anchor). If any of the three negative lookaheads at the start fails, the whole string match will be failed right away.
By this Regex you match what you dont want as social security number:
^(?:(\d)\1{8})|(?:(\d)\2{2}-\2{2}-\2{4})$
Demo
By this regex you match only what you want:
^(?!(?:(\d)\1{8})|(?:(\d)\2{2}-\2{2}-\2{4})).*$
Demo
For example, I have a string 111352_01_2_SAMPLE_TEXT_SAMPLE. I need to match first, second, third number and remaining text.
Currently I have this:
First number: ^[^_]+(?=_) (Everything until 1. underscore)
Second number: (?<=_)[^_]*(?=_) (Everything between 1. and 2. underscore)
Remaining text: (?:.*?_){3}(.*)\s* (Text after third occurrence of underscore)
Is there any more "readable" way of building expression, since the logic for first three matches in quite similar.
And what's the best way of writing expression for matching everything
Since you tagged regex-group I think a more straightforward way of retrieving these three substring could be:
^(.*?)_(.*?)_.*?_(.*)$
See the demo
Maybe you are looking to get a single regex expressions that is applicable to whichever element from the string you want. In that case you could use:
^(?:.*?_){0}([^\n_]+)
This is a zero-index type of retrieving elements delimited by an underscore. However, I do not see the benefit over a regular split() function. Change the zero to a 1, 2 or 3 etc.
Just use
^(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+)_(.+)
See a demo on regex101.com.
I am trying to generate a regular expression that will match any numbers within the range of 99 and 9999999. I have trouble understanding how generating number ranges generally works. I managed to find a range generator online that does the job for me, but I want to understand how it actually works.
My attempt to do this range is as follows:
(99|[1-9][0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])
This is supposed to match 99, any 3 digit number or any 4 digit number, but it does not work as expected. When tested it matches only numbers 99 and 3 digit numbers. Four digit numbers are not matched at all. If I only write the part for 4 digit numbers on its own as
[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]
It matches 4 digit numbers, but when I construct it as in the first example it does not work. Can someone give me some clarification how this actually works and how successfully to generate a regular expression for the range of 99 to 9999999.
Link to demo - Here
So you want to know how this works...
Regexs have no real understanding of the values of numbers in your string, it only cares how they are represented, which is why looking for numbers in a range seems more awkward than it should be. The only reason your regex engine can understand a range in a character class like [0-9] at all is because of the characters' positions in a list (a character range like [&-~] is just as valid, and equally understandable to it.)
So, to match a range like 99-9999999, ya gotta spell out what that looks like: literal "99", or three digits without a leading zero, or four digits without a leading zero, and so on.
But this is what your demo did, right? And it didn't work. Of your test string "9293" your regex only matched "929". What happened here is the regex engine is eager to return a complete match - as soon as it found one it returned it, even though a better/longer match might have occurred later.
Here's how that match happened. (I'll skip some details like grouping, as they're not super relevant here.)
Step 1.
The engine compares the first token in the regex with the first character in the string
(99|[1-9][0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])
9293 ✅
Success, they match.
Step 2.
The engine then advances both to the next token in the regex and the next character in the string and compares them.
(99|[1-9][0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])
9293 ❌
Failure, no match. The engine would stop and return the failure here, but you're using alternation via |, so it knows there's an alternate expression to try.
Step 3.
The engine advances to the first token of the next alternate expression in the regex, and rewinds the position in the string.
(99|[1-9][0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])
9293 ✅
Success, they match.
Step 4.
Continuing on.
(99|[1-9][0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])
9293 ✅
Match.
Step 5.
And again.
(99|[1-9][0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])
9293 ✅
Success. The complete expression matches. There's no need to try the remaining alternate. The match here returned is:
929
As you've probably figured out, if your input string was instead "9923" then step 2 would've matched and the engine there would've stopped and returned "99".
As you've also probably figured out, if you rearrange your alternate expressions from longest to shortest
([1-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9]|99)
the longest would be attempted first, which would match and return your expected "9293".
Simplifying
It's still pretty wordy though, especially as you crank up the number of digits in your range. There are a couple things you can do to simplify it.
The character class [0-9] can be represented by the shorthand character class \d.
([1-9]\d\d\d|[1-9]\d\d|99)
And instead of repeating them use a quantifier in curly brackets like so:
([1-9]\d{3}|[1-9]\d{2}|99)
As it happens, quantifiers can also take the form of {min, max}, so you can combine the two similar alternates:
([1-9]\d{2,3}|99)
You might expect this to land you back returning "929" again, the engine being eager and all, but quantifiers are by default greedy so they'll try to pick up as much as they can. This lends itself well to your larger desired range:
([1-9]\d{2,6}|99)
Finishing up
What you do with it from here depends on what you need the regex to do. As it stands the parentheses are superfluous, there's no point in creating a capturing group of the entire regex itself. However a decision comes when you've got an input string like:
You will likely be eaten by 1000 grue.
If you're trying to pluck out how many grue are about to eat you, you might use
[1-9]\d{2,6}|99
which will return 1000.
However that sorta runs back into the original problem with your demo. If it's "12345678 grue", which is out of range, this'll match "1234567" which might not be what you want. You can make sure the number you've matched isn't immediately followed by (or preceded by) another digit by using negative lookarounds.
(?<!\d)([1-9]\d{2,6}|99)(?!\d)
(?<!\d) means "from this position, the prior character is not a digit" while (?!\d) means "from this position, the next character is not a digit."
The parentheses around the alternates are back as they're necessary for grouping here, otherwise the lookbehind would only be part of and apply in the first alternate expression and the lookahead would only be part of and apply in the second alternate.
On the other hand if you're trying to make sure the entire string only consists of a number in your range you'll want to instead use the anchors ^ and $ (start of string and end of string, respectively):
^([1-9]\d{2,6}|99)$
And finally you can trade the capturing group out for a non-capturing group (?:...), so:
^(?:[1-9]\d{2,6}|99)$
or
(?<!\d)(?:[1-9]\d{2,6}|99)(?!\d)
You'll still grab the number as the match, it just won't be repeated in a group capture. (Lookarounds are already non-capturing, no need to worry about those.)
First of all you need some string boundaries for you regex (anything except digit, in my example I use ^ and $ -- begging and end of line or string)
Try this one:
^([1-9][0-9]{2,6}|99)$
I have some experience with regular expressions but I am far from expert level and need a way to match the record with the most explicit string in a file where each record begins with a unique 1-5 digit integer and is padded with various other characters when it is shorter than 5 digits. For example, my file has records that begin with:
32000
3201X
32014
320xy
In this example, the non-numeric characters represent wildcards. I thought the following regex examples would work but rather than match the record with the MOST explicit number, they always match the record with the LEAST explicit number. Remember, I do not know what is in the file so I need to test all possibilities to locate the MOST explicit match.
If I need to search for 32000, the regex looks something like:
/^3\D{4}|^32\D{3}|^320\D{2}|^3200\D|^32000/
It should match 32000 but it matches 320xy
If I need to search for 32014, the regex looks something like:
/^3\D{4}|^32\D{3}|^320\D{2}|^3201\D|^32014/
It should match 32014 but it matches 320xy
If I need to search for 32015, the regex looks something like:
/^3\D{4}|^32\D{3}|^320\D{2}|^3201\D|^32015/
It should match 3201x but it matches 320xy
In each case, the matched result is the LEAST specific numeric value. I also tried reversing the regex as follows by still get the same results:
/^32014|^3201\D|^320\D{2}|^32\D{3}|^3\D{4}/
Any help is much appreciated.
Okay, if you want to match a string literally then use anchors. Then specify the string you want matched. For instance match '123456xyz' where the xyz can be anything excep numeric use:
'^123456[^0-9]{3}$'
If you prefer specific letters to match at the end, if they will always be x y or z then use:
'^123456[xyz]{3}$'
Note the ^ and $ anchor the string to start with 12345 and end with three letters that are x y or z.
Good luck!
Ok, I did quite some tinkering here. I am 99% percent sure that this is pretty much impossible (if we don't cheat and interpolate code into the regex). The reason is you will need a negative lookbehind with variable length at some point.
However, I came up with two alternatives. One is if you want just to find the "most exact match", the second one is if you want to replace it with something. Here we go:
/(32000)|\A(?!.*32000).*(3200\D)|\A(?!.*3200[0\D]).*(320\D\D)|\A(?!.*320[0\D][0\D]).*(32\D\D\D)|\A(?!.*32[0\D][0\D][0\D]).*(3\D\D\D\D)/m
Question:
So what is my "most exact match" here?
Answer:
The concatenation of the 5 matched groups - \1\2\3\4\5. In fact always only one of them will match, the other 4 will be empty.
/(32000)|\A(?!.*32000)(.*)(3200\D)|\A(?!.*3200[0\D])(.*)(320\D\D)|\A(?!.*320[0\D][0\D])(.*)(32\D\D\D)|\A(?!.*32[0\D][0\D][0\D])(.*)(3\D\D\D\D)/m
Question:
How can I use this to replace my "most exact match"?
Answer:
In this case your "most exact match" will be the concatenation of \1\3\5\7\9, but we will have also matched some other things before that, namely \2\4\6\8 (again, only one of these can be non empty). Therefore if you want to replace your "most exact match" with fubar you can match with the above regex and replace with \2\4\6\8fubar
Another way you can think about it (and might be helpful) is that your "most exact match" will be the last matched line of either of the two regexes.
Two things to note here:
I used Ruby style RE, \A means the beginning of the string (not the beginning of a line - ^). \m means multi line mode. You should be able to find syntax for the same things in your language/technology as long as it uses some flavor of PCRE.
This can be slow. If we don't find exact match we might possibly have to match and replace the entire string (if the non exact match can be found at the end of the string).
so basically I want to detect if in these strings:
Hello 123 My 222 dear 112 troll 12 8889
192.1.1.254:10000
the numbers are in a format like this:
[0 to 255][ANYTHING][0 to 255][ANYTHING][0 to 255][ANYTHING][0 to 255][ANYTHING][0 to 65536]
Does anyone know how I can build such a regex?
It is for detecting if anyone posts an IP:Port in unusual format to bypass default ip:port filters.
Edit: As for the first comment: I do not know regex and what I have tried is:
if(regex_match("192.168 najlepszy serwer SAMP!!1 1 join1!! 8080","/^[0-2](*)?[0-5](*)?[0-5](*).(*)[0-2](*)?[0-5](*)?[0-5](*).(*)[0-2](*)?[0-5](*)?[0-5](*).(*)[0-2](*)?[0-5](*)?[0-5](*)?$/"))
{
print("Cannot send message");
}
else
{
print("New message for everyone! :)");
}
and some other not working regexes.
If you don't want to complicate your life checking the exact ranges, the simple regex would be:
/^.*(\d)+.+(\d)+.+(\d)+.+(\d)+.+(\d)+.*$/
The first four (\d)+ parts can be replaced with more complicated check for 0-255 range:
(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|[01]?[0-9][0-9]?)
the last (\d)+ replace with next for port range check:
(6553[0-5]|655[0-2]\d|65[0-4]\d\d|6[0-4]\d\d\d|[1-5]\d\d\d\d|[1-9]\d{0,3})
An exact, simple, and direct representation of your pattern as a regular expression is not possible in the general case. The reason are the number ranges. Something like "at this place any integral number with a value from a to b" is just to complex. A regular expression is executed by a finite state machine and these (theoretical) beasts are (basically) only able to look at strings character by character. Therefore you can match something like "ignore all characters until you find the first digit, then check whether the first digit is followed by at most two more digits".
As a workaround you may try to build a list of alternations of possible digit patterns that covers your desired range of values (in the extreme case list every single value like \b(?:1|2|3|4|...|154|155|...|255)\b). I have a pattern for the range 0-255, but I have none for the range of possible port numbers. So a first approximation may be (really, this is only an approximation and not thoroughly tested):
\b(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\b.*\b(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\b.*\b(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\b.*\b(?:[0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9][0-9]|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\b[^0-9]*[0-9]{1,5}
In the above pattern (?: .... ) means a shy group (not remembered for back references) and \b means word boundary.
I'd suggest you read up on Regex syntax. For starters . is special and matches any character. Also doing something like [0-2][0-5][0-5] won't catch something like 192 as 9 is not within 0-5.
According to your requirements here's a Regex that should roughly do what you want
([0-2]?\d{1,2}).*([0-2]?\d{1,2}).*([0-2]?\d{1,2}).*([0-2]?\d{1,2}).*(\d{1,5})?
Each of the ([0-2]?\d{1,2}) portions will match 1 or 2 digits preceded optionally with a 0,1, or 2. Each () will capture a group which you can then examine using a Regex engine. You will need to examine this group as the Regex for each of those portions will match numbers above 255 (specifically 256-299).
The last group (\d{1,5})? is to catch the port number, again you will have to examine this as it will catch any 1 to 5 digit number (hence the {1,5}). The ? makes the group optional, remove it if you want it to have to match against a port number.
As far as doing Regex in C, I haven't had much experience but there should be a way to get all the grouped matches and inspect them. Unfortunately they will be strings so you will have to convert them to integers to examine them.
Are you sure you need regex for this? In my opinion, you do not need regex for this.
Just split numbers into groups which are seperated by non-numeric characters. Then analyze.
What language?
As for actually looking for valid range, take a look at this;
http://www.regular-expressions.info/numericranges.html
I would do this simple regex
((\d|\D)+)*