Hi need to extract ONE letter from a string.
The string i have is a big block of html, but the part where i need to search in is this text:
Vahvistustunnus M :
And I need to get the M inside the nbsp's
So, who is the quickest regex-guru out there? :)
Ok, according to this page in the molybdenum api docs, the results will be all of the groups concatenated together. Given that you just want the char between the two 's then it's not good enough to match the whole thing and then pull out the group. Instead you'll need to do something like this:
(?<=Vahvistustunnus )[a-zA-Z](?= )
Warning
This might not work for you because lookbehinds (?<=pattern) are not available in all regex flavors. Specifically, i think that because molybdenum is a firefox extension, then it's likely using ECMA (javascript) regex flavor. And ECMA doesn't support lookbehinds.
If that's the case, then i'm gonna have to ask someone else to answer your question as my regex ninja (amateur) skills don't go much further than that. If you were using the regex in javascript code, then there are ways around this limitation, but based on your description, it sounds like you have to solve this problem with nothing but a raw regex?
Looks like it uses JavaScript and if so
var str = "Vahvistustunnus M :";
var patt = "Vahvistustunnus ([A-Z]) :";
var result = str.match(patt)[1];
should work.
Related
I need to split a string to one or more substrings each of which contains no more or less than two dots. For example, if the string is foo.boo.coo.too" then what would be the regex to get the following array?: ["foo.boo.coo", "boo.coo.too"]. I hope there will be someone to answer this question - I will really admire you, as I've been programming for several years and have not still be used to regular expressions well enough to solve this particular problem by myself. Thank you very much in advance. Let me know your identity so that I can credit you as a contributor of the program I am creating.
RegEx is for this Problem not the best solution a similar problem was discussed here: split-a-sting-every-3-characters-from-back-javascript
A good javascript solution would be a javascript function like this
function splitter(text){
var parts = text.split(".");
var times = parts.length - 2;
var values = [];
for(var index = 0; index<times;index++)
{
values.push(parts.slice(index,index+3).join("."));
}
return values;
}
splitter("too.boo.coo.too")
//=> Result tested on Chrome 25+ ["too.boo.coo", "boo.coo.too"]
I hope this helps
If you want to Use Regex try the Lookhead Stuff, this could help http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html
Regex by its nature will return non-intersecting results, so if you want "all matches" from a single regex - it's not possible.
So basically you will need to find first match, and then start from next position to find next match and so on; something like this technique described here regex matches with intersection in C# (it's not JavaScript but idea is the same)
You can use the following regex for example:
(?<=^|\.)((?:[^.]*\.){2}[^.]*?)(?=$|\.)
It ensures that it starts and ends with dot, or at begin/end of line, and contains exactly two dots inside, and captures result in first capture. You can replace * with + to make sure at least one symbol exists between dots, if it is required.
But you need to understand that such approach has really bad performance for the task you are solving, so may be using other way (like split + for) will be better solution.
ok i do have this following data in my div
<div id="mydiv">
<!--
what is your present
<code>alert("this is my present");</code>
where?
<code>alert("here at my left hand");</code>
oh thank you! i love you!! hehe
<code>alert("welcome my honey ^^");</code>
-->
</div>
well what i need to do there is to get the all the scripts inside the <code> blocks and the html codes text nodes without removing the html comments inside. well its a homework given by my professor and i can't modify that div block..
I need to use regular expressions for this and this is what i did
var block = $.trim($("div#mydiv").html()).replace("<!--","").replace("-->","");
var htmlRegex = new RegExp(""); //I don't know what to do here
var codeRegex = new RegExp("^<code(*n)</code>$","igm");
var code = codeRegex.exec(block);
var html = "";
it really doesn't work... please don't give the exact answer.. please teach me.. thank you
I need to have the following blocks for the variable code
alert("this is my present");
alert("here at my left hand");
alert("welcome my honey ^^");
and this is the blocks i need for variable html
what is your present
where?
oh thank you! i love you!! hehe
my question is what is the regex pattern to get the results above?
Parsing HTML with a regular expression is not something you should do.
I'm sure your professor thinks he/she was really clever and that there's no way to access the DOM API and can wave a banner around and justify some minor corner-case for using regex to parse the DOM and that sometimes it's okay.
Well, no, it isn't. If you have complex code in there, what happens? Your regex breaks, and perhaps becomes a security exploit if this is ever in production.
So, here:
http://jsfiddle.net/zfp6D/
Walk the dom, get the nodeType 8 (comment) text value out of the node.
Invoke the HTML parser (that thing that browsers use to parse HTML, rather than regex, why you wouldn't use the HTML parser to parse HTML is totally beyond me, it's like saying "Yeah, I could nail in this nail with a hammer, but I think I'm going to just stomp on the nail with my foot until it goes in").
Find all the CODE elements in the newly parsed HTML.
Log them to console, or whatever you want to do with them.
First of all, you should be aware that because HTML is not a regular language, you cannot do generic parsing using regular expressions that will work for all valid inputs (generic nesting in particular cannot be expressed with regular expressions). Many parsers do use regular expressions to match individual tokens, but other algorithms need to be built around them
However, for a fixed input such as this, it's just a case of working through the structure you have (though it's still often easier to use different parsing methods than just regular expressions).
First lets get all the code:
var code = '', match = [];
var regex = new RegExp("<code>(.*?)</code>", "g");
while (match = regex.exec(content)) {
code += match[1] + "\n";
}
I assume content contains the content of the div that you've already extracted. Here the "g" flag says this is for "global" matching, so we can reuse the regex to find every match. The brackets indicate a capturing group, . means any character, * means repeated 0 or more times, and ? means "non-greedy" (see what happens without it to see what it does).
Now we can do a similar thing to get all the other bits, but this time the regex is slightly more complicated:
new RegExp("(<!--|</code>)(.*?)(-->|<code>)", "g")
Here | means "or". So this matches all the bits that start with either "start comment" or "end code" and end with "end comment" or "start code". Note also that we now have 3 sets of brackets, so the part we want to extract is match[2] (the second set).
You're doing a lot of unnecessary stuff. .html() gives you the inner contents as a string. You should be able to use regEx to grab exactly what you need from there. Also, try to stick with regEx literals (e.g. /^regexstring$/). You have to escape escape characters using new RegExp which gets really messy. You generally only want to use new RegExp when you need to put a string var into a regEx.
The match function of strings accepts regEx and returns a collection of every match when you add the global flag (e.g. /^regexstring$/g <-- note the 'g'). I would do something like this:
var block = $('#mydiv').html(), //you can set multiple vars in one statement w/commas
matches = block.match(/<code>[^<]*<\/code>/g);
//[^<]* <-- 0 or more characters that aren't '<' - google 'negative character class'
matches.join('_') //lazy way of avoiding a loop - join into a string with a safe character
.replace(/<\/*code>/g,'') //\/* 0 or more forward slashes
.split('_');//return the matches string back to array
//Now do what you want with matches. Eval (ew) or append in a script tag (ew).
//You have no control over the 'ew'. I just prefer data to scripts in strings
I am trying to parse a string in this format
[something](something something) [something](something something)
and I want to break on every space that is not between a set of parenthesis?
I tried using js string.split with this as the regex /[^\(].*\s+.*[^\)]/g, but it doesn't work? Any suggestions appreciated :-)
EDIT: I don't want to post this as an answer, because I want to leave it open to comments but I finally found a solution.
var a = "the>[the](the the) the>[the](the the) the"
var regex = /\s+(?!\w+[\)])/
var b = a.split(regex)
alert(b.join("+++"))
Is your input always this consistent? If it is, it could be as simple as splitting your string on ') ['
If it isn't, is it possible to just take what is between [ and )? Or is there some kind of nesting that is going on?
You are using the wrong tool for the job.
As was alluded to in this famous post, regular expressions cannot parse non-regular languages, and the "balanced parenthesis" problem cannot be described by a regular language.
Have you tried writing a parser instead?
EDIT:
It seems that you've finally clarified that nesting is not a requirement. In that case, I'd suggest gnur's solution.
This regex will do exactly what you asked, and nothing more:
'[x](x x) [x](x x)'.split(/ +(?![^\(]*\))/);
In Jeff Roberson's jQuery Regular Expressions Review he proposes changing the rts regular expression in jQuery's ajax.js from /(\?|&)_=.*?(&|$)/ to /([?&])_=[^&\r\n]*(&?)/. In both versions, what is the purpose of the second capture group? The code does a replacement of the current random timestamp with a new random timestamp:
var ts = jQuery.now();
// try replacing _= if it is there
var ret = s.url.replace(rts, "$1_=" + ts + "$2");
Doesn't it only replace what it matches? I am thinking this does the same:
var ret = s.url.replace(/([?&])_=[^&\r\n]*/, "$1_=" + ts);
Can someone explain the purpose of the second capture group?
It's to pick up the next delimiter in the query string on the URL, so that it still works properly as a query string. Thus if the url is
http://foo.bar/what/ever?blah=blah&_=12345&zebra=banana
then the second group picks up the "&" before "zebra".
That's an awesome blog post by the way and everybody should read it.
edit — now that I think about it, I'm not sure why it's necessary to bother with replacing that second delimiter. In the "fixed" expression, that greedy * will pick up the whole parameter value and stop at the delimiter (or the end of the string) anyway.
I think you're right. It was needed in the original because matching the ampersand or end-of-string was how the .*? knew when to stop. In Jeff's version that's no longer necessary.
As the author of the article I can't tell you the reason for the second capture group. My intent with the article was to take existing regexes and simply make them more efficient - i.e. they should all match the same text - just do it faster. Unfortunately I did not have time to delve deeply into the code to see exactly how each and every one of them was being used. I assumed that the capture group for this one was there for a reason so I did not mess with it.
I am trying to write some JavaScript RegEx to replace user inputed tags with real html tags, so [b] will become <b> and so forth. the RegEx I am using looks like so
var exptags = /\[(b|u|i|s|center|code){1}]((.){1,}?)\[\/(\1){1}]/ig;
with the following JavaScript
s.replace(exptags,"<$1>$2</$1>");
this works fine for single nested tags, for example:
[b]hello[/b] [u]world[/u]
but if the tags are nested inside each other it will only match the outer tags, for example
[b]foo [u]to the[/u] bar[/b]
this will only match the b tags. how can I fix this? should i just loop until the starting string is the same as the outcome? I have a feeling that the ((.){1,}?) patten is wrong also?
Thanks
The easiest solution would be to to replace all the tags, whether they are closed or not and let .innerHTML work out if they are matched or not it will much more resilient that way..
var tagreg = /\[(\/?)(b|u|i|s|center|code)]/ig
div.innerHTML="[b][i]helloworld[/b]".replace(tagreg, "<$1$2>") //no closing i
//div.inerHTML=="<b><i>helloworld</i></b>"
AFAIK you can't express recursion with regular expressions.
You can however do that with .NET's System.Text.RegularExpressions using balanced matching. See more here: http://blogs.msdn.com/bclteam/archive/2005/03/15/396452.aspx
If you're using .NET you can probably implement what you need with a callback.
If not, you may have to roll your own little javascript parser.
Then again, if you can afford to hit the server you can use the full parser. :)
What do you need this for, anyway? If it is for anything other than a preview I highly recommend doing the processing server-side.
You could just repeatedly apply the regexp until it no longer matches. That would do odd things like "[b][b]foo[/b][/b]" => "<b>[b]foo</b>[/b]" => "<b><b>foo</b></b>", but as far as I can see the end result will still be a sensible string with matching (though not necessarily properly nested) tags.
Or if you want to do it 'right', just write a simple recursive descent parser. Though people might expect "[b]foo[u]bar[/b]baz[/u]" to work, which is tricky to recognise with a parser.
The reason the nested block doesn't get replaced is because the match, for [b], places the position after [/b]. Thus, everything that ((.){1,}?) matches is then ignored.
It is possible to write a recursive parser in server-side -- Perl uses qr// and Ruby probably has something similar.
Though, you don't necessarily need true recursive. You can use a relatively simple loop to handle the string equivalently:
var s = '[b]hello[/b] [u]world[/u] [b]foo [u]to the[/u] bar[/b]';
var exptags = /\[(b|u|i|s|center|code){1}]((.){1,}?)\[\/(\1){1}]/ig;
while (s.match(exptags)) {
s = s.replace(exptags, "<$1>$2</$1>");
}
document.writeln('<div>' + s + '</div>'); // after
In this case, it'll make 2 passes:
0: [b]hello[/b] [u]world[/u] [b]foo [u]to the[/u] bar[/b]
1: <b>hello</b> <u>world</u> <b>foo [u]to the[/u] bar</b>
2: <b>hello</b> <u>world</u> <b>foo <u>to the</u> bar</b>
Also, a few suggestions for cleaning up the RegEx:
var exptags = /\[(b|u|i|s|center|code)\](.+?)\[\/(\1)\]/ig;
{1} is assumed when no other count specifiers exist
{1,} can be shortened to +
Agree with Richard Szalay, but his regex didn't get quoted right:
var exptags = /\[(b|u|i|s|center|code)](.*)\[\/\1]/ig;
is cleaner. Note that I also change .+? to .*. There are two problems with .+?:
you won't match [u][/u], since there isn't at least one character between them (+)
a non-greedy match won't deal as nicely with the same tag nested inside itself (?)
Yes, you will have to loop. Alternatively since your tags looks so much like HTML ones you could replace [b] for <b> and [/b] for </b> separately. (.){1,}? is the same as (.*?) - that is, any symbols, least possible sequence length.
Updated: Thanks to MrP, (.){1,}? is (.)+?, my bad.
How about:
tagreg=/\[(.?)?(b|u|i|s|center|code)\]/gi;
"[b][i]helloworld[/i][/b]".replace(tagreg, "<$1$2>");
"[b]helloworld[/b]".replace(tagreg, "<$1$2>");
For me the above produces:
<b><i>helloworld</i></b>
<b>helloworld</b>
This appears to do what you want, and has the advantage of needing only a single pass.
Disclaimer: I don't code often in JS, so if I made any mistakes please feel free to point them out :-)
You are right about the inner pattern being troublesome.
((.){1,}?)
That is doing a captured match at least once and then the whole thing is captured. Every character inside your tag will be captured as a group.
You are also capturing your closing element name when you don't need it and are using {1} when that is implied. Below is a cleanup up version:
/\[(b|u|i|s|center|code)](.+?)\[\/\1]/ig
Not sure about the other problem.