I have a pretty much messy array of strings which doesn't follow any particular pattern.
Basically, it's users' properties which are messed up (all info in one string without following any kind of pattern).
I'm interested in 2 particular properties (email and number).
I found a way around to get email and thought that the following regex:
^9[0-9]{9}
would work for users' phones. However, some users do have emails which are equal to phone numbers + '#'.something. That seems to be a problem.
So, I need a regex which will exclude the following and give me just a number.
9876548877#
I've tried
^9[0-9]{9}((?!#).{0})*$"
And get full match here:
9876548877
But it works so well only if the string doesn't contain anything apart from this.
I am trying to achieve is getting exactly phone number in a string like this:
/* mess mess mess*/ John Doe Jr email: 9876548877#jdoe.com, phone number: 9876548877, /* more mess */
How do I do it? Thanks in advance.
UPD:
Thank you for your answers sirs, but what the task is a little bit different
For example, I took a regex from here and then I test it here I get the result I want. I'm trying to accomplish the same behaviour, but with the phone number and without '#' to be sure that it's exactly what I'm looking for.
The question wasn't described properly. My bad.
You could use lookarounds to assert what is on the left is not a non whitespace char and on the right in not an #:
(?<!\S)9[0-9]{9}(?!\#)
Regex demo
If there can be for example a : directly before the number you could omit the lookbehind at the start and use a word boundary \b
Related
Let's say I have this pattern:
(?:StackOverflow is (.*)|(.*) is StackOverflow)
I am using Java or Python. But I think they work quite similar.
My Input Strings would be:
StackOverflow is great
or
great is StackOverflow
In the real use case, I don't know the pattern and I don't know the input String. Both are set by the user.
I've tested it with regex101.com .
The result looks like this:
StackOverflow is great : Group 0 is great
great is StackOverflow : Group 1 is great
However I need both times to have Group 0 be great .
So what I'm trying to achieve is: Only count those groups, that actually exist in the input strings. Any other part of the big surrounding OR - group should be ignored.
I searched already on the internet but I don't really know what to search for in this case.
Is there a way to do this in RegEx?
Generally speaking, regex doesn't work that way. Groups are numbered from left to right and there's nothing you can do about it.
That said, the regex module for python does it differently. It would consider both of these groups as #1. Unfortunately I don't know if such a thing exists for Java.
However, I think the real solution here is for the user to input a different regex. For example, your regex could be written as (StackOverflow is )?(.+)(?(1)| is StackOverflow), which is functionally equivalent except the word you're matching will always be in group #2. (Of course, this solution doesn't work if the word absolutely must be captured in group #1.)
Before y'all jump on me for posting something similar to previous questions asked, yes, there seem to be a number of regex related questions but nothing which seems to help me, or at least that I can see.
I am trying to parse strings in JAVA using PATTERN and MATCHER and am really having no joy. My regular expression seems to match my input string when I use a few of the online regular expression testing websites but Java simply does not match my expression.
My input string is:
"Big apple" title="Little Apple" type="Container" url="http://malcolm.com/testing"
The regular expression I am using to match is ".*" title="(.*)" type="Container" url="(.*)"
Essentially I want to pull out the text within the second and the fourth set of quotes. There will always be 4 sets of quotes with text within and around.
I am coding as follows:
Variable XMLSubstring contains the string above (including the quotes) and is as stated, even when I print it out.
Pattern p = Pattern.compile(".* title=\"(.*)\" type=\"Container\" url=\"(.*)\"");
m = p.matcher(XMLSubstring);
It doesn't appear to be rocket science I'm attempting but I'm pulling my hair out trying to debug the bloody thing.
Is there something wrong with my regex pattern?
Is there something wrong with the code I am using?
Am I simply a moron and should stop coding with immediate effect?
EDIT & UPDATE: I have found the problem. My string had a space at the end of it which was breaking the parser! How silly, and I think based on that, I need to accept the third suggestion of mine and give up programming. Thanks all for your assistance.
Try this,
String str="\"Big apple\" title=\"Little Apple\" type=\"Container\" url=\"http://malcolm.com/testing\"";
Pattern p=Pattern.compile(".* title=\\\".*\\\" type=\\\"Container\\\" url=\\\".*\\\"");
Matcher m=p.matcher(str);
I have the following string: SEE ATTACHED ADDENDUM TO HUD-1194,520.07
Inside that string is HUD-1 and after that is 194,520.07. What I want is the 194,520.07 part.
I have written the following regular expression to pull that value out:
[^D\-1](?:-|\()?\$?(?:\d{1,3}[ ,]?)*(?:\.\d+)\)?
However, this pulls out: 94,520.07
I know it has something to do with this part: [^D\-1] "eating" to many of the 1's. Any ideas how I can stop it from "eating" 1's after the first one that appears in HUD-1?
UPDATED:
The reason for all the other stuff is I only want to match as well if the value after HUD-1 is a money amount. And the rest of that regex tries to determine all the different ways a money amount could be written
Why not something as simple as:
.*HUD\-1(.*+)
Ok, you need to be more restrictive I see based on your updated question. Try changing [^D\-1] to just (?:HUD\-1)?. For what it's worth, your currency RegEx is vary lax, allowing input like:
001 001 .31412341234123
You might consider not reinventing the wheel there, I'm sure you can find a currency RegEx quickly via Google. Otherwise, I'd also suggest anchoring your RegEx with a $ at the end of it.
this change will make the second match group of the regex include the full number you would like (everything after the first 1), and put the possible HUD-1 in a separate matching group, if present.
(HUD-1)?((?:-|\()?\$?(?:\d{1,3}[ ,]?)*(?:\.\d+)\)?)
Regex Pattern - ([^=](\\s*[\\w-.]*)*$)
Test String - paginationInput.entriesPerPage=5
Java Regex Engine Crashing / Taking Ages (> 2mins) finding a match. This is not the case for the following test inputs:
paginationInput=5
paginationInput.entries=5
My requirement is to get hold of the String on the right-hand side of = and replace it with something. The above pattern is doing it fine except for the input mentioned above.
I want to understand why the error and how can I optimize the Regex for my requirement so as to avoid other peculiar cases.
You can use a look behind to make sure your string starts at the character after the =:
(?<=\\=)([\\s\\w\\-.]*)$
As for why it is crashing, it's the second * around the group. I'm not sure why you need that, since that sounds like you are asking for :
A single character, anything but equals
Then 0 or more repeats of the following group:
Any amount of white space
Then any amount of word characters, dash, or dot
End of string
Anyway, take out that *, and it doesn't spin forever anymore, but I'd still go for the more specific regex using the look behind.
Also, I don't know how you are using this, but why did you have the $ in there? Then you can only match the last one in the string (if you have more than one). It seems like you'd be better off with a look-ahead to the new line or the end: (?=\\n|$)
[Edit]: Update per comment below.
Try this:
=\\s*(.*)$
InputString: A soldier may have bruises , wounds , marks , dislocations or other Injuries that hurt him .
ExpectedOutput:
bruises
wounds
marks
dislocations
Injuries
Generalized Pattern Tried:
".[\s]?(\w+?)"+ // bruises.
"(?:(\s)?,(\s)?(\w+?))*"+ // wounds marks dislocations
"[\s]?(?:or|and) other (\w+)."; // Injuries
The pattern should be able to match other input strings like: A soldier may have bruiser or other injuries that hurt him.
On trying the generalized pattern above, the output is:
bruises
dislocations
Injuries
There is something wrong with the capturing group for "(?:(\s)?,(\s)?(\w+?))*". The capturing group has one more occurences.. but it returns only "dislocations". "marks" and "dislocation: are devoured.
Could you please suggest what should be the right pattern, and where is the mistake?
This question comes closest to this question, but that solution didn't help.
Thanks.
When the capture group is annotated with a quantifier [ie: (foo)*] then you will only get the last match. If you wanted to get all of them then you need to quantifier inside the capture and then you will have to manually parse out the values. As big a fan as I am of regex, I don't think it's appropriate here for any number of reasons... even if you weren't ultimately doing NLP.
How to fix: (?:(\s)?,(\s)?(\w+?))*
Well, the quantifier basically covers the whole regex in that case and you might as well use Matcher.find() to step through each match. Also, I'm curious why you have capture groups for the whitespace. If all you are trying to do is find a comma-separated set of words then that's something like: \w+(?:\s*,\s*\w+)* Then don't bother with capture groups and just split the whole match.
And for anything more complicated re: NLP, GATE is a pretty powerful tool. The learning curve is steep at times but you have a whole industry of science-guys to draw from: http://gate.ac.uk/
Regex in not suited for (natural) language processing. With regex, you can only match well defined patterns. You should really, really abandon the idea of doing this with regex.
You may want to start a new question where you specify what programming language you're using to perform this task and ask for pointers there.
EDIT
PSpeed posted a promising link to a 3rd party library, Gate, that's able to do many language processing tasks. And it's written in Java. I have not used it myself, but looking at the people/institutions working on it, it seems pretty solid.
The pattern that works is: \w+(?:\s*,\s*\w+)* and then manually separate CSV
There is no other method to do this with Java Regex.
Ideally, Java regex is not suitable for NLP. A useful tool for text mining is: gate.ac.uk
Thanks to Bart K. , and PSpeed.