regex to match strings that don't contain any digits?

[Dave]

Hello,

I cannot think how to do this. I need to check if a string does not
contain any digits. I tried the following, which didn't seem to work:

[^\d]
(?!\d)+

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
KJ

/^[^0-9]+$/ or /^[^0-9]*$/ (if you want to allow empty string)

 

[n_o_s_p_a__m]

Hello,

I cannot think how to do this. I need to check if a string does not
contain any digits. I tried the following, which didn't seem to work:

[^\d]
(?!\d)+

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
KJ

 

[Arne Ruhnau]

I cannot think how to do this. I need to check if a string does not
contain any digits. I tried the following, which didn't seem to work:

[^\d]
(?!\d)+

Any suggestions?

Untested: /^\D+$/

Arne Ruhnau

 

[Paul Lalli]

Hello,

I cannot think how to do this. I need to check if a string does not
contain any digits. I tried the following, which didn't seem to work:

[^\d]

This will check to see if the string contains any single non-digit at
all.

(?!\d)+

This will check to see that the next thing is not a digit.

You need to reverse your thinking. Rather than checking if the string
does not contain any digits, check to see that it does contain entirely
non-digits.

$string =~ /^\D+$/

Paul Lalli

 

[n_o_s_p_a__m]

That works great, thanks. Taking the example further, I'd like to find
out which strings do not match a particular regex.

For example, I want all the strings that do not match the following
expression (for a year range):

\d{2,}-\d+

How to do this? Negative lookahead?

 

[Eric Schwartz]

That works great, thanks.

Er, what works great? The article you're replying to has not yet
arrived on my news server, so I have no idea what solution you liked.
Please quote enough context that those of us (the majority, I suspect)
not using Google Groups to read USENET can figure out what you're
replying to.

Taking the example further, I'd like to find
out which strings do not match a particular regex.

For example, I want all the strings that do not match the following
expression (for a year range):

\d{2,}-\d+

How to do this? Negative lookahead?

Perldoc perlop, look for !~

Personally, though, I find !~ slows me down significantly when reading
a program. I don't know why, and I'm perfectly willing to believe it
is because I am a bear of very little brain, but every time I see it,
I mentally end up reading the regex, inverting it, and applying that
inversion to the string. Ugly, I know.

In general, I prefer to negate the test instead of the operator.
Instead of:

if ($string !~ /some regex/) {
...
}

I prefer:

unless ($string =~ /some regex/) {
...
}

-=Eric

 

[n_o_s_p_a__m]

(responding to eric: The previous suggestions of /^[^0-9]+$/ or
/^[^0-9]*$/ or /^\D+$/ all "worked great".)

 

[axel]

I cannot think how to do this. I need to check if a string does not
contain any digits. I tried the following, which didn't seem to work:

[^\d]
(?!\d)+

Any suggestions?

The regular expression metasymbol \D stands for any non-digit
character.

Using this you should be able to build a regex which excludes all
digits.

Axel

 

[Dave Weaver]

I cannot think how to do this. I need to check if a string does not
contain any digits.

In addition to the other replies; you can use the !~ operator to
determine if a string DOESN'T match a regex:

if ( $string !~ /\d/ ) {
print "$string does not contain any digits\n";
}