regular expression

[Petr Dupovnik]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Hello

Suppose I have a string with some repeating patterns:

string = "some miscellaneous text [sdfsdf.wer], some more miscellaneous text
[vbnfg.thy], and yet more text [jkhjkhjk.345]"

I want catch all instances of "[.*]" in this line - without the square
brackets. - in the above example that would be 'sdfsdf.wer', 'vbnfg.thy',
and 'jkhjkhjk.345'.

What regular expression would pull each instance of "[.*]" into a separate
element in an array?

my_match=string.match('\[(\w+\.\w{3}\]')

This only catches the first match, and ignores the second and third.

grateful for any help.

Petr.

 

[Sebastian Hungerecker]

What regular expression would pull each instance of "[.*]" into a separate
element in an array?

"some miscellaneous text [sdfsdf.wer], some more miscellaneous text
[vbnfg.thy], and yet more text [jkhjkhjk.345]".scan(/\[[^\]]+\]/).flatten
=> ["[sdfsdf.wer]", "[vbnfg.thy]", "[jkhjkhjk.345]"]

HTH,
Sebastian

 

[Kyle Schmitt]

Hello

Suppose I have a string with some repeating patterns:

string = "some miscellaneous text [sdfsdf.wer], some more miscellaneous text
[vbnfg.thy], and yet more text [jkhjkhjk.345]"

I want catch all instances of "[.*]" in this line - without the square
brackets. - in the above example that would be 'sdfsdf.wer', 'vbnfg.thy',
and 'jkhjkhjk.345'.

string.scan /(\[[^\]]*\])/
would do the trick
..although you could also use split with that same regex if you needed
the rest of the data for something.

scan is only keeping the saved part of the regex, as marked by our parenthesies
Inside of them is the slightly ugly statement
\[[^\]*]\]
since brackets are special in regexs, we have to escape them first,
hence the \[ and \] stuff
So it matches one bracket, [, and anything that isn't another bracket,
], followed by one bracket, ].

Does that make sense?

--Kyle

 

[Petr Dupovnik]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Perfect.

Thanks Kyle & Sebastian.

Hello

Suppose I have a string with some repeating patterns:

string = "some miscellaneous text [sdfsdf.wer], some more miscellaneous text
[vbnfg.thy], and yet more text [jkhjkhjk.345]"

I want catch all instances of "[.*]" in this line - without the square
brackets. - in the above example that would be 'sdfsdf.wer', 'vbnfg.thy',
and 'jkhjkhjk.345'.

string.scan /(\[[^\]]*\])/
would do the trick
..although you could also use split with that same regex if you needed
the rest of the data for something.

scan is only keeping the saved part of the regex, as marked by our
parenthesies
Inside of them is the slightly ugly statement
\[[^\]*]\]
since brackets are special in regexs, we have to escape them first,
hence the \[ and \] stuff
So it matches one bracket, [, and anything that isn't another bracket,
], followed by one bracket, ].

Does that make sense?

--Kyle

 

[Robert Dober]

What regular expression would pull each instance of "[.*]" into a separate
element in an array?

"some miscellaneous text [sdfsdf.wer], some more miscellaneous text
[vbnfg.thy], and yet more text [jkhjkhjk.345]".scan(/\[[^\]]+\]/).flatten
=> ["[sdfsdf.wer]", "[vbnfg.thy]", "[jkhjkhjk.345]"]

HTH,
Sebastian

scan( /\[(.*?)\]/ ).flatten

is a shorter alternative showing the use of the non greedy Kleene Star "*?"
But often it is indeed a good idea to be very explicit in your regular
expressions.

Cheers
Robert

 

[Kyle Schmitt]

But often it is indeed a good idea to be very explicit in your regular
expressions.

Often it's a good idea just because it keeps you from using explicit
language when debugging your code later....