I have to validate next string format:
text-text-id-text
Separator is character '-'. Third column must always be id. I wrote next regex (in python) which validates string:
import re
s = 'col1-col2-col3-id' # any additional text at the end
# is allowed e.g. -col4-col5
print re.match('^(.*-){3}id(-.*)?$', s) # ok
print re.match('^(.*-){1}id(-.*)?$', s) # still ok, is should not be
I tried adding non-greedy mode, but result is still the same:
^(.*?-){1}id(-.*)?$
What am I missing in my regex? I could just validate string like this:
>>> import re
>>> print re.split('-', 'col1-col2-col3-id')
['col1', 'col2', 'col3', 'id']
And then check if the third element matches id, but I am interested in why does the first regex works as mentioned above.
Your first regex is incorrect because it asserts that id is present after the first three items.
Your second regex matches the string incorrectly because .* matches hyphens as well.
You should use this regex:
/^(?:[^-]+-){2}id/
Here is a regex demo!
And if you feel a need to anchor a regex to the end, use /^(?:[^-]*-){2}id.*$/!
As mentioned by Tim Pietzcker, consider asserting id at the end of the item:
/^(?:[^-]+-){2}id(?![^-])/
Here is an UPDATED regex demo!
Related
I want to extract the number before "2022" in a set of strings possibly. I current do
a= mystring.strip().split("2022")[0]
and, for instance, when mystring=' 1020220519AX', this gives a = '10'. However,
mystring.strip().split("2022")[0]
fails when mystring=' 20220220519AX' to return a='202'. Therefore, I want the code to split the string on "2022" that is not at the beginning non-whitespace characters in the string.
Can you please guide with this?
Use a regular expression rather than split().
import re
mystring = ' 20220220519AX'
match = re.search(r'^\s*(\d+?)2022', mystring)
if match:
print(match.group(1))
^\s* skips over the whitespace at the beginning, then (\d+?) captures the following digits up to the first 2022.
You can tell a regex engine that you want all the digits before 2022:
r'\d+(?=2022)'
Like .split(), a regex engine is 'greedy' by default - 'greedy' here means that as soon as it can take something that it is instructed to take, it will take that and it won't try another option, unless the rest of the expression cannot be made to work.
So, in your case, mystring.strip().split("2022") splits on the first 2020 it can find and since there's nothing stopping it, that is the result you have to work with.
Using regex, you can even tell it you're not interested in the 2022, but in the numbers before it: the \d+ will match as long a string of digits it can find (greedy), but the (?=2022) part says it must be followed by a literal 2022 to be a match (and that won't be part of the match, a 'positive lookahead').
Using something like:
import re
mystring = ' 20220220519AX'
print(re.findall(r'\d+(?=2022)', mystring))
Will show you all consecutive matches.
Note that for a string like ' 920220220519AX 12022', it will find ['9202', '1'] and only that - it won't find all possible combinations of matches. The first, greedy pass through the string that succeeds is the answer you get.
You could split() asserting not the start of the string to the left after using strip(), or you can get the first occurrence of 1 or more digits from the start of the string, in case there are more occurrences of 2022
import re
strings = [
' 1020220519AX',
' 20220220519AX'
]
for s in strings:
parts = re.split(r"(?<!^)2022", s.strip())
if parts:
print(parts[0])
for s in strings:
m = re.match(r"\s*(\d+?)2022", s)
if m:
print(m.group(1))
Both will output
10
202
Note that the split variant does not guarantee that the first part consists of digits, it is only splitted.
If the string consists of only word characters, splitting on \B2022 where \B means non a word boundary, will also prevent splitting at the start of the example string.
I need to search a string in Python 3 and I'm having troubles implementing a non greedy logic starting from the end.
I try to explain with an example:
Input can be one of the following
test1 = 'AB_x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481.xml'
test2 = 'x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481.xml'
test3 = 'XX1234567890_84481.xml'
I need to find the last part of the string ending with
somestring_otherstring.xml
In all the above cases the regex should return XX1234567890_84481.xml
My best try is:
result = re.search('(_.+)?\.xml$', test1, re.I).group()
print(result)
Here I used:
(_.+)? to match "_anystring" in a non greedy mode
\.xml$ to match ".xml" in the final part of the string
The output I get is not correct:
_x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481.xml
I found some SO questions (link) explaining the regex starts from the left even with non greedy qualifier.
Could anyone explain me how to implement a non greedy regex from the right?
Your pattern (_.+)?\.xml$ captures in an optional group from the first underscore until it can match .xml at the end of the string and it does not take the number of underscores that should be between into account.
To only match the last part you can omit the capturing group. You could use a negated character class and use the anchor $ to assert the end of the line as it is the last part:
[^_]+_[^_]+\.xml$
Regex demo | Python demo
That will match
[^_]+ Match 1+ times not _
_ Match literally
[^_]+ Match 1+ times not _
\.xml$ Match .xml at the end of the string
For example:
import re
test1 = 'AB_x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481.xml'
result = re.search('[^_]+_[^_]+\.xml$', test1, re.I)
if result:
print(result.group())
Not sure if this matches what you're looking for conceptually as "non greedy from the right" - but this pattern yields the correct answer:
'[^_]+_[^_]+\.xml$'
The [^_] is a character class matching any character which is not an underscore.
You need to use this regex to capture what you want,
[^_]*_[^_]*\.xml
Demo
Check out this Python code,
import re
arr = ['AB_x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481.xml','x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481.xml','XX1234567890_84481.xml']
for s in arr:
m = re.search(r'[^_]*_[^_]*\.xml', s)
if (m):
print(m.group(0))
Prints,
XX1234567890_84481.xml
XX1234567890_84481.xml
XX1234567890_84481.xml
The problem in your regex (_.+)?\.xml$ is, (_.+)? part will start matching from the first _ and will match anything until it sees a literal .xml and whole of it is optional too as it is followed by ?. Due to which in string _x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481.xml, it will also match _x-y-z_XX1234567890_84481 which isn't the correct behavior you desired.
I seldom use | together with .* before. But today when I use both of them together, I find some results really confusing. The expression I use is as follows (in python):
>>> s = "abcdefg"
>>> re.findall(r"((a.*?c)|(.*g))",s)
[('abc',''),('','defg')]
The result of the first caputure is all right, but the second capture is beyond my expectation, for I have expected the second capture would be "abcdefg" (the whole string).
Then I reverse the two alternatives:
>>> re.findall(r"(.*?g)|(a.*?c)",s)
[('abcdefg', '')]
It seems that the regex engine only reads the string once - when the whole string is read in the first alternative, the regex engine will stop and no longer check the second alternative. However, in the first case, after dealing with the first alternative, the regex engine only reads from "a" to "c", and there are still "d" to "g" left in the string, which matches ".*?g" in the second alternative. Have I got it right? What's more, as for an expression with alternatives, the regex engine will check the first alternative first, and if it matches the string, it will never check the second alternative. Is it correct?
Besides, if I want to get both "abc" and "abcdefg" or "abc" and "bcde" (the two results overlap) like in the first case, what expression should I use?
Thank you so much!
You cannot have two matches starting from the same location in the regex (the only regex flavor that does it is Perl6).
In re.findall(r"((a.*?c)|(.*g))",s), re.findall will grab all non-overlapping matches in the string, and since the first one starts at the beginning, ends with c, the next one can only be found after c, within defg.
The (.*?g)|(a.*?c) regex matches abcdefg because the regex engine parses the string from left to right, and .*? will get any 0+ chars as few as possible but up to the first g. And since g is the last char, it will match and capture the whole string into Group 1.
To get abc and abcdefg, you may use, say
(a.*?c)?.*g
See the regex demo
Python demo:
import re
rx = r"(a.*?c)?.*g"
s = "abcdefg"
m = re.search(rx, s)
if m:
print(m.group(0)) # => abcdefg
print(m.group(1)) # => abc
It might not be what you exactly want, but it should give you a hint: you match the bigger part, and capture a subpart of the string.
Re-read the docs for the re.findall method.
findall "return[s] all non-overlapping matches of pattern in string, as a list of strings. The string is scanned left-to-right, and matches are returned in the order found."
Specifically, non-overlapping matches, and left-to-right. So if you have a string abcdefg and one pattern will match abc, then any other patterns must (1) not overlap; and (2) be further to the right.
It's perfectly valid to match abc and defg per the description. It would be a bug to match abc and abcdefg or even abc and cdefg because they would overlap.
I want to match a string contained in a pair of either single or double quotes. I wrote a regex pattern as so:
pattern = r"([\"\'])[^\1]*\1"
mytext = '"bbb"ccc"ddd'
re.match(pattern, mytext).group()
The expected output would be:
"bbb"
However, this is the output:
"bbb"ccc"
Can someone explain what's wrong with the pattern above? I googled and found the correct pattern to be:
pattern = r"([\"\'])[^\1]*?\1"
However, I don't understand why I must use ?.
In your regex
([\"'])[^\1]*\1
Character class is meant for matching only one character. So your use of [^\1] is incorrect. Think, what would have have happened if there were more than one characters in the first capturing group.
You can use negative lookahead like this
(["'])((?!\1).)*\1
or simply with alternation
(["'])(?:[^"'\\]+|\\.)*\1
or
(?<!\\)(["'])(?:[^"'\\]+|\\.)*\1
if you want to make sure "b\"ccc" does not matches in string bb\"b\"ccc"
You should use a negative lookahead assertion. And I assume there won't be any escaped quotes in your input string.
>>> pattern = r"([\"'])(?:(?!\1).)*\1"
>>> mytext = '"bbb"ccc"ddd'
>>> re.search(pattern, mytext).group()
'"bbb"'
You can use:
pattern = r"[\"'][^\"']*[\"']"
https://regex101.com/r/dO0cA8/1
[^\"']* will match everything that isn't " or '
Let's say I want to remove all duplicate chars (of a particular char) in a string using regular expressions. This is simple -
import re
re.sub("a*", "a", "aaaa") # gives 'a'
What if I want to replace all duplicate chars (i.e. a,z) with that respective char? How do I do this?
import re
re.sub('[a-z]*', <what_to_put_here>, 'aabb') # should give 'ab'
re.sub('[a-z]*', <what_to_put_here>, 'abbccddeeffgg') # should give 'abcdefg'
NOTE: I know this remove duplicate approach can be better tackled with a hashtable or some O(n^2) algo, but I want to explore this using regexes
>>> import re
>>> re.sub(r'([a-z])\1+', r'\1', 'ffffffbbbbbbbqqq')
'fbq'
The () around the [a-z] specify a capture group, and then the \1 (a backreference) in both the pattern and the replacement refer to the contents of the first capture group.
Thus, the regex reads "find a letter, followed by one or more occurrences of that same letter" and then entire found portion is replaced with a single occurrence of the found letter.
On side note...
Your example code for just a is actually buggy:
>>> re.sub('a*', 'a', 'aaabbbccc')
'abababacacaca'
You really would want to use 'a+' for your regex instead of 'a*', since the * operator matches "0 or more" occurrences, and thus will match empty strings in between two non-a characters, whereas the + operator matches "1 or more".
In case you are also interested in removing duplicates of non-contiguous occurrences you have to wrap things in a loop, e.g. like this
s="ababacbdefefbcdefde"
while re.search(r'([a-z])(.*)\1', s):
s= re.sub(r'([a-z])(.*)\1', r'\1\2', s)
print s # prints 'abcdef'
A solution including all category:
re.sub(r'(.)\1+', r'\1', 'aaaaabbbbbb[[[[[')
gives:
'ab['