How to negate an inner character in a glob pattern - java

The question
java nio negate a glob pattern
asked how to make a glob pattern matching strings that do not start with a given character, say "a". The accepted answer
"[!a]*"
does work for starting characters and also for ending characters,
"*[!a]"
However, it does not work for positions in between. For example
"*[!.]*"
does not filter out file names with a dot somewhere inside the file name. (While, of course,
"*.*"
does filter out file names without a dot.) How can I do inner character negation?

It works perfectly fine in the middle of matcher. The thing to realize is that foo.bar DOES match *[!.]*
To show that this is a match:
Let the first star match foo.b. This is allowed since it can match any string of any length.
The next character is not a period, so [!.] matches a
Let the second star match the remainder, r
This is the complete input, and therefore foo.bar matches *[!.]*.
The pattern matches "any string that contains a character that is not a period". You instead wanted "any string that does not contain any periods anywhere".
In regex, this is the difference between ^.*[^.].*$ and ^([^.])*$.
Unfortunately, globs are not powerful enough to express what you want.

Related

Exclude a letter in Regex Pattern

I am trying to create a Regex pattern for <String>-<String>. This is my current pattern:
(\w+\-\w+).
The first String is not allowed to be "W". However, it can still contain "W"s if it's more than one letter long.
For example:
W-80 -> invalid
W42-80 -> valid
How can this be achieved?
So your first string can be either: one character but not W or 2+ characters. Simple pattern to achieve that is:
([^W]|\w{2,})-\w+
But this pattern is not entirely correct, because now it allows any character for first part, but originally only \w characters were expected to be allowed. So correct pattern is:
([\w&&[^W]]|\w{2,})-\w+
Pattern [\w&&[^W]] means any character from \w character class except W character.
Just restrict the last char to "any word char except 'W'".
There are a couple of ways to do this:
Negative look-behind (easy to read):
^\w+(?<!W)-\w+$
See live demo.
Negated intersection (trainwreck to read):
^\w*[\w&&[^W]]-\w+$
See live demo.
——
The question has shifted. Here’s a new take:
^.+(?<!^W)-\w+
This allows anything as the first term except just "W".

Regex format for a particular Match

I am trying to write a regex for the following format
PA-123456-067_TY
It's always PA, followed by a dash, 6 digits, another dash, then 3 digits, and ends with _TY
Apparently, when I write this regex to match the above format it shows the output correctly
^[^[PA]-]+-(([^-]+)-([^_]+))_([^.]+)
with all the Negation symbols ^
This does not work if I write the regex in the below format without negation symbols
[[PA]-]+-(([-]+)-([_]+))_([.]+)
Can someone explain to me why is this so?
The negation symbol means that the character cannot be anything within the specified class. Your regex is much more complicated than it needs to be and is therefore obfuscating what you really want.
You probably want something like this:
^PA-(\d+)-(\d+)_TY$
... which matches anything that starts with PA-, then includes two groups of numbers separated by a dash, then an underscore and the letters TY. If you want everything after the PA to be what you capture, but separated into the three groups, then it's a little more abstract:
^PA-(.+)-(.+)_(.+)$
This matches:
PA-
a capture group of any characters
a dash
another capture group of any characters
an underscore
all the remaining characters until end-of-line
Character classes [...] are saying match any single character in the list, so your first capture group (([^-]+)-([^_]+)) is looking for anything that isn't a dash any number of times followed by a dash (which is fine) followed by anything that isn't an underscore (again fine). Having the extra set of parentheses around that creates another capture group (probably group 1 as it's the first parentheses reached by the regex engine)... that part is OK but probably makes interpreting the answer less intuitive in this case.
In the re-write however, your first capture group (([-]+)-([_]+)) matches [-]+, which means "one or more dashes" followed by a dash, followed by any number of underscores followed by an underscore. Since your input does not have a dash immediately following PA-, the entire regex fails to find anything.
Putting the PA inside embedded character classes is also making things complicated. The first part of your first one is looking for, well, I'm not actually sure how [^[PA]-]+ is interpreted in practice but I suspect it's something like "not either a P or an A or a dash any number of times". The second one is looking for the opposite, I think. But you don't want any of that, you just want to start without anything other than the actual sequence of characters you care about, which is just PA-.
Update: As per the clarifications in the comments on the original question, knowing you want fixed-size groups of digits, it would look like this:
^PA-(\d{6})-(\d{3})_TY$
That captures PA-, then a 6-digit number, then a dash, then a 3-digit number, then _TY. The six digit number and 3 digit numbers will be in capture groups 1 and 2, respectively.
If the sizes of those numbers could ever change, then replace {x} with + to just capture numbers regardless of max length.
according to your comment this would be appropriate PA-\d{6}-\d{3}_TY
EDIT: if you want to match a line use it with anchors: ^PA-\d{6}-\d{3}_TY$

How to match a string in this way?

I need to check if a String matches this specific pattern.
The pattern is:
(Numbers)(all characters allowed)(numbers)
and the numbers may have a comma ("." or ",")!
For instance the input could be 500+400 or 400,021+213.443.
I tried Pattern.matches("[0-9],?.?+[0-9],?.?+", theequation2), but it didn't work!
I know that I have to use the method Pattern.match(regex, String), but I am not being able to find the correct regex.
Dealing with numbers can be difficult. This approach will deal with your examples, but check carefully. I also didn't do "all characters" in the middle grouping, as "all" would include numbers, so instead I assumed that finding the next non-number would be appropriate.
This Java regex handles the requirements:
"((-?)[\\d,.]+)([^\\d-]+)((-?)[\\d,.]+)"
However, there is a potential issue in the above. Consider the following:
300 - -200. The foregoing won't match that case.
Now, based upon the examples, I think the point is that one should have a valid operator. The number of math operations is likely limited, so I would whitelist the operators in the middle. Thus, something like:
"((-?)[\\d,.]+)([\\s]*[*/+-]+[\\s]*)((-?)[\\d,.]+)"
Would, I think, be more appropriate. The [*/+-] can be expanded for the power operator ^ or whatever. Now, if one is going to start adding words (such as mod) in the equation, then the expression will need to be modified.
You can see this regular expression here
In your regex you have to escape the dot \. to match it literally and escape the \+ or else it would make the ? a possessive quantifier. To match 1+ digits you have to use a quantifier [0-9]+
For your example data, you could match 1+ digits followed by an optional part which matches either a dot or a comma at the start and at the end. If you want to match 1 time any character you could use a dot.
Instead of using a dot, you could also use for example a character class [-+*] to list some operators or list what you would allow to match. If this should be the only match, you could use anchors to assert the start ^ and the end $ of the string.
\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?.\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?
In Java:
String regex = "\\d+(?:[.,]\\d+)?.\\d+(?:[.,]\\d+)?";
Regex demo
That would match:
\d+(?:[.,]\d+)? 1+ digits followed by an optional part that matches . or , followed by 1+ digits
. Match any character (Use .+) to repeat 1+ times
Same as the first pattern

Java regex mix two patterns

How can i get this pattern to work:
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[\\p{P}\\p{Z}]");
Basically, this will split my String[] sentence by any kind of punctuation character (p{P} or any kind of whitespace (p{Z}). But i want to exclude the following case:
(?<![A-Za-z-])[A-Za-z]+(?:-[A-Za-z]+){1,}(?![A-Za-z-])
pattern explained here: Java regex patterns
which are the hyphened words like this: "aaa-bb", "aaa-bb-cc", "aaa-bb-c-dd". SO, i can i do that?
Unfortunately it seems like you can't merge both expressions, at least as far as I know.
However, maybe you can reformulate your problem.
If, for example, you want to split between words (which can contain hyphens), try this expression:
(?>[^\p{L}-]+|-[^\p{L}]+|^-|-$)
This should match any sequence of non-letter characters that are not a minus or any minus that is followed my a non-letter character or that is the first or last character in the input.
Using this expression for a split should result in this:
input="aaa-bb, aaa-bb-cc, aaa-bb-c-dd,no--match,--foo"
ouput={"aaa-bb","aaa-bb-cc","aaa-bb-c-dd","no","match","","foo"}
The regex might need some additional optimization but it is a start.
Edit: This expression should get rid of the empty string in the split:
(?>[^\p{L}-][^\p{L}]*|-[^\p{L}]+|^-|-$)
The first part would now read as "any non-character which is not a minus followed by any number of non-character characters" and should match .-- as well.
Edit: in case you want to match words that could potentially contain hyphens, try this expression:
(?>(?<=[^-\p{L}])|^)\p{L}+(?:-\p{L}+)*(?>(?=[^-\p{L}])|$)
This means "any sequence of letters (\p{L}+) followed by any number of sequences consisting of one minus and at least one more letters ((?:-\p{L}+)*+). That sequence must be preceeded by either the start or anything not a letter or minus ((?>(?<=[^-\p{L}])|^)) and be followed by anything that is not a letter or minus or the end of the input ((?>(?=[^-\p{L}])|$))".

regex for specific digit prefix

I am trying to have the following regx rule, but couldn't find solution.
I am sorry if I didn't make it clear. I want for each rule different regx. I am using Java.
rule should fail for all digit inputs start with prefix '1900' or '1901'.
(190011 - fail, 190111 - fail, 41900 - success...)
rule should success for all digit inputs with the prefix '*'
different regex for each rule (I am not looking for the combination of both of them together)
Is this RE fitting the purpose ? :
'\A(\*|(?!190[01])).*'
\A means 'the beginning of string' . I think it's the same in Java's regexes
.
EDIT
\A : "from the very beginning of the string ....". In Python (which is what I know, in fact) this can be omitted if we use the function match() that always analyzes from the very beginning, instead of search() that search everywhere in a string. If you want the regex able to analyze lines from the very beginning of each line, this must be replaced by ^
(...|...) : ".... there must be one of the two following options : ....."
\* : "...the first option is one character only, a star; ..." . As a star is special character meaning 'zero, one or more times what is before' in regex's strings, it must be escaped to strictly mean 'a star' only.
(?!190[01]) : "... the second option isn't a pattern that must be found and possibly catched but a pattern that must be absent (still after the very beginning). ...". The two characters ?! are what says 'there must not be the following characters'. The pattern not to be found is 4 integer characters long, '1900' or '1901' .
(?!.......) is a negative lookahead assertion. All kinds of assertion begins with (? : the parenthese invalidates the habitual meaning of ? , that's why all assertions are always written with parentheses.
If \* have matched, one character have been consumed. On the contrary, if the assertion is verified, the corresponding 4 first characters of the string haven't been consumed: the regex motor has gone through the analysed string until the 4th character to verify them, and then it has come back to its initial position, that is to say, presently, at the very beginning of the string.
If you want the bi-optional part (...|...) not to be a capturing group, you will write ?: just after the first paren, then '\A(?:\*|(?!190[01])).*'
.* : After the beginning pattern (one star catched/matched, or an assertion verified) the regex motor goes and catch all the characters until the end of the line. If the string has newlines and you want the regex to catch all the characters until the end of the string, and not only of a line, you will specify that . must match the newlines too (in Python it is with re.MULTILINE), or you will replace .* with (.|\r|\n)*
I finally understand that you apparently want to catch strings composed of digits characters. If so the RE must be changed to '\A(?:\*|(?!190[01]))\d*' . This RE matches with empty strings. If you want no-match with empty strings, put \d+ in place of \d* . If you want that only strings with at least one digit, even after the star when it begins with a star, match, then do '\A(?:\*|(?!190[01]))(?=\d)\d*'
For the first rule, you should use a combo regex with two captures, one to capture the 1900/1901-prefixed case, and one the capture the rest. Then you can decide whether the string should succeed or fail by examining the two captures:
(190[01]\d+)|(\d+)
Or just a simple 190[01]\d+ and negate your logic.
Regex's are not really very good at excluding something.
You may exclude a prefix using negative look-behind, but it won't work in this case because the prefix is itself a stream of digits.
You seem to be trying to exclude 1-900/901 phone numbers in the US. If the number of digits is definite, you can use a negative look-behind to exclude this prefix while matching the remaining exact number digits.
For the second rule, simply:
\*\d+

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