Assuming I have 2 array of strings
position1 = ['word1', 'word2', 'word3']
position2 = ['word4', 'word1']
and I want inside a text/string to check if the substring #{target} which exists in text is followed by either one of the words of position1 or following one of the words of the position2 or even both at the same time. Similarly as if I am looking left and right of #{target}.
For example in the sentence "Writing reports and inputting data onto internal systems, with regards to enforcement and immigration papers" if the target word is data I would like to check if the word left (inputting) and right (onto) are included in the arrays or if one of the words in the arrays return true for the regex match. Any suggestions? I am using Ruby and I have tried some regex but I can't make it work yet. I also have to ignore any potential special characters in between.
One of them:
/^.*\b(#{joined_position1})\b.*$[\s,.:-_]*\b#{target}\b[\s,.:-_\\\/]*^.*\b(#{joined_position2})\b.*$/i
Edit:
I figured out this way with regex to capture the word left and right:
(\S+)\s*#{target}\s*(\S+)
However what could I change if I would like to capture more than one words left and right?
If you have two arrays of strings, what you can do is something like this:
matches = /^.+ (\S+) #{target} (\S+) .+$/.match(text)
if matches and (position1.include?(matches[1]) or position2.include?(matches[2]))
do_something()
end
What this regex does is match the target word in your text and extract the words next to it using capture groups. The code then compares those words against your arrays, and does something if they're in the right places. A more general version of this might look like:
def checkWords(target, text, leftArray, rightArray, numLeft = 1, numRight = 1)
# Build the regex
regex = "^.+"
regex += " (\S+)" * numLeft
regex += " #{target}"
regex += " (\S+)" * numRight
regex += " .+$"
pattern = Regexp.new(regex)
matches = pattern.match(text)
return false if !matches
for i in 1..numLeft
return false if (!leftArray.include?(matches[i]))
end
for i in 1..numRight
return false if (!rightArray.include?(matches[numLeft + i]))
end
return true
end
Which can then be invoked like this:
do_something() if checkWords("data", text, position1, position2, 2, 2)
I'm pretty sure it's not terribly idiomatic, but it gives you a general sense of how you would do what you in a more general way.
Related
I want to check and capture 2 or x words after and before a target string in a multiline text. The problem is that if the words matched are less than x number of words, then regex cuts off the last word and splits it till x.
For example
text = "This is an example /year"
if example is the target:
Matching Data: "is" , "an", "/yea", "r"
If i add random words after /year it matches it correctly.
How could I fix this so that if less than x words exist just stop there or return empty for the rest of the matches?
So it should be
Matching Data: "is" , "an", "/year", ""
def checkWords(target, text, numLeft = 2, numRight = 2)
target = target.compact.map{|x| x.inspect}.join('').gsub(/"/, '')
regex = ""
regex += "\\s+{,2}(\\S+)\\s+{,2}" * numLeft
regex += target
regex += "\\s+{,2}(\\S+)" * numRight
pattern = Regexp.new(regex)
matches = pattern.match(text)
puts matches.inspect
end
Since you want to capture the words before and after target, you need to set a capturing group around the whole regex parts that match the 0 to 2 occurrences of spaces-non-spaces. Also, you need to allow a minimum bound of 0 - use {0,2} (or a more succint {,2}) limiting quantifier to make sure you get the context on the left even if it is missing on the right:
/((?:\S+\s+){,2})target((?:\s+\S+){,2})/
^ ^ ^ ^
See this Rubular demo
If you use /(?:(\S+)\s+){0,2}target(?:\s+(\S+)){0,2}/, all captured values but the last one will be lost, i.e. once quantified, repeated capturing groups only store the value captured during the last iteration in the group buffer.
Also note that setting a {,2} quantifier on the + quantifier makes no sense, \\s+{,2} = \\s+.
I have a string https://stackverflow.com. I want a new string that contains the domain from the given string using regular expressions.
Example:
x = "https://stackverflow.com"
newstring = "stackoverflow.com"
Example 2:
x = "https://www.stackverflow.com"
newstring = "www.stackoverflow.com"
"https://stackverflow.com"[/(?<=:\/\/).*/]
#⇒ "stackverflow.com"
(?<=..) is a positive lookbehind.
If string = "http://stackoverflow.com",
a really easy way is string.split("http://")[1]. But this isn't regex.
A regex solution would be as follows:
string.scan(/^http:\/\/(.+)$/).flatten.first
To explain:
String#scan returns the first match of the regex.
The regex:
^ matches beginning of line
http: matches those characters
\/\/ matches //
(.+) sets a "match group" containing any number of any characters. This is the value returned by the scan.
$ matches end of line
.flatten.first extracts the results from String#scan, which in this case returns a nested array.
You might want to try this:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
str = "https://stackoverflow.com"
if mtch = str.match(/(?::\/\/)(/S)/)
f1 = mtch.captures
end
There are two capturing groups in the match method: the first one is a non-capturing group referring to your search pattern and the second one referring to everything else afterwards. After that, the captures method will assign the desired result to f1.
I hope this solves your problem.
Lets say I have the following string and I want the below output without requiring csv.
this, "what I need", to, do, "i, want, this", to, work
this
what i need
to
do
i, want, this
to
work
This problem is a classic case of the technique explained in this question to "regex-match a pattern, excluding..."
We can solve it with a beautifully-simple regex:
"([^"]+)"|[^, ]+
The left side of the alternation | matches complete "quotes" and captures the contents to Group1. The right side matches characters that are neither commas nor spaces, and we know they are the right ones because they were not matched by the expression on the left.
Option 2: Allowing Multiple Words
In your input, all tokens are single words, but if you also want the regex to work for my cat scratches, "what I need", your dog barks, use this:
"([^"]+)"|[^, ]+(?:[ ]*[^, ]+)*
The only difference is the addition of (?:[ ]*[^, ]+)* which optionally adds spaces + characters, zero or more times.
This program shows how to use the regex (see the results at the bottom of the online demo):
subject = 'this, "what I need", to, do, "i, want, this", to, work'
regex = /"([^"]+)"|[^, ]+/
# put Group 1 captures in an array
mymatches = []
subject.scan(regex) {|m|
$1.nil? ? mymatches << $& : mymatches << $1
}
mymatches.each { |x| puts x }
Output
this
what I need
to
do
i, want, this
to
work
Reference
How to match (or replace) a pattern except in situations s1, s2, s3...
Article about matching a pattern unless...
I have a string something like:
test:awesome my search term with spaces
And I'd like to extract the string immediately after test: into one variable and everything else into another, so I'd end up with awesome in one variable and my search term with spaces in another.
Logically, what I'd so is move everything matching test:* into another variable, and then remove everything before the first :, leaving me with what I wanted.
At the moment I'm using /test:(.*)([\s]+)/ to match the first part, but I can't seem to get the second part correctly.
The first capture in your regular expression is greedy, and matches spaces because you used .. Instead try:
matches = string.match(/test:(\S*) (.*)/)
# index 0 is the whole pattern that was matched
first = matches[1] # this is the first () group
second = matches[2] # and the second () group
Use the following:
/^test:(.*?) (.*)$/
That is, match "test:", then a series of characters (non-greedily), up to a single space, and another series of characters to the end of the line.
I am guessing you want to remove all the leading spaces before the second match too, hence I have \s+ in the expression. Otherwise, remove the \s+ from the expression, and you'll have what you want:
m = /^test:(\w+)\s+(.*)/.match("test:awesome my search term with spaces")
a = m[1]
b = m[2]
http://codepad.org/JzuNQxBN
I have a string in Ruby:
str = "<TAG1>Text 1<TAG1>Text 2"
I want to use gsub to get a string like this:
want = "<TAG2>Text 1</TAG2><TAG2>Text2</TAG2>"
In other words, I want to save everything in between a <TAG1> and EITHER: 1) the next occurrence of a "<", or 2) the end of the string.
The best regex i could come up with was:
regex = /<TAG1>(.*)(?:<|$)/
But the problem with this is that it'll just match the entire str, where what I want is both matches within str. (In other words, it seems like the end of string char ($) seems to have precedence over the "<" character--is there a way to flip it around?
/<TAG1>([^<]*)/ will match that. If there's no < it'll go all the way to the end of the string. Otherwise it will stop when it hits a <. Your problem is that . matches < as well. An alternative way would be to do /<TAG1>(.*?)(?:<|$)/, which makes the * non-greedy.