Regex matching chars around text - ruby

I have a string with chars inside and I would like to match only the chars around a string.
"This is a [1]test[/1] string. And [2]test[/2]"
Rubular http://rubular.com/r/f2Xwe3zPzo
Currently, the code in the link matches the text inside the special chars, how can I change it?
Update
To clarify my question. It should only match if the opening and closing has the same number.
"[2]first[/2] [1]second[/2]"
In the code above, only first should match and not second. The text inside the special chars (first), should be ignored.

Try this:
(\[[0-9]\]).+?(\[\/[0-9]\])
Permalink to the example on Rubular.
Update
Since you want to remove the 'special' characters, try this instead:
foo = "This is a [1]test[/1] string. And [2]test[/2]"
foo.gsub /\[\/?\d\]/, ""
# => "This is a test string. And test"
Update, Part II
You only want to remove the 'special' characters when the surrounding tags match, so what about this:
foo = "This is a [1]test[/1] string. And [2]test[/2], but not [3]test[/2]"
foo.gsub /(?:\[(?<number>\d)\])(?<content>.+?)(?:\[\/\k<number>\])/, '\k<content>'
# => "This is a test string. And test, but not [3]test[/2]"

\[([0-9])\].+?\[\/\1\]
([0-9]) is a capture since it is surrounded with parentheses. The \1 tells it to use the result of that capture. If you had more than one capture, you could reference them as well, \2, \3, etc.
Rubular
You can also use a named capture, rather than \1 to make it a little less cryptic. As in: \[(?<number>[0-9])\].+?\[\/\k<number>\]

Here's a way to do it that uses the form of String#gsub that takes a block. The idea is to pull strings such as "[1]test[/1]" into the block, and there remove the unwanted bits.
str = "This is a [1]test[/1] string. And [2]test[/2], plus [3]test[/99]"
r = /
\[ # match a left bracket
(\d+) # capture one or more digits in capture group 1
\] # match a right bracket
.+? # match one or more characters lazily
\[\/ # match a left bracket and forward slash
\1 # match the contents of capture group 1
\] # match a right bracket
/x
str.gsub(r) { |s| s[/(?<=\]).*?(?=\[)/] }
#=> "This is a test string. And test, plus [3]test[/99]"
Aside: When I first heard of named capture groups, they seemed like a great idea, but now I wonder if they really make regexes easier to read than \1, \2....

Related

Regex to select all the commas from string that do not have any white space around them

I want to select all the commas in a string that do not have any white space around. Suppose I have this string:
"He,she, They"
I want to select only the comma between he and she. I tried this in rubular and came up with this regex:
(,[^(,\s)(\s,)])
This selects the comma that I want, but also selects an s which is a character after it.
In your regex (,[^(,\s)(\s,)]) you capture a comma followed by a negated character class that matches not any of the specified characters, which could also be written as (,[^)(,\s]) which will capture for example ,s in a group,
What you could do is use a positive lookahead and a positve lookbehind to check what is on the left and what is on the right is not a \S whitespace character:
(?<=\S),(?=\S)
Regex demo
In Ruby, you may use [[:space:]] to match any (Unicode) whitespace and [^[:space:]] to match any char other than whitespace. Using these character classes inside lookarounds solves the problem:
/(?<=[^[:space:]]),(?=[^[:space:]])/
See the Rubular demo
Here,
(?<=[^[:space:]]) - a positive lookbehind that matches a location that is immediately preceded with a non-whitespace char (if the string start position should also be matched, replace with (?<![[:space:]]))
, - a comma
(?=[^[:space:]]) - a positive lookahead that matches a location that is immediately followed with a non-whitespace char (if the string end position should also be matched, replace with (?![[:space:]])).
Check the regex below and use the code hope it will help you!
re = /[^\s](,)[^\s]/m
str = 'check ,my,domain, qwe,sd'
# Print the match result
str.scan(re) do |match|
puts match.to_s
end
Check LIVE DEMO HERE

Matching the word without space and has to include certain start of the word

I am trying to match
driver. in
def fun
driver.find_element(:link_text, "Standard Menu Rates").click
driver.find_element(:id, "jpform:fromStation").send_keys("HOSUR - HSRA")
#driver.find_element(:id, "jpform:toStation").send_keys("SATUR - SRT")
So I have to written the following regular expression
^driver.
But driver. is having some space infront of the word, so it's not matching, How would I eliminate the space as well as stick to the start of the string as driver not #driver or not any other word?
Input
def fun
driver.find_element(:link_text, "Standard Menu Rates").click
driver.find_element(:id, "jpform:fromStation").send_keys("HOSUR - HSRA")
#driver.find_element(:id, "jpform:toStation").send_keys("SATUR - SRT")
output
driver.find_element(:link_text, "Standard Menu Rates").click
driver.find_element(:id, "jpform:fromStation").send_keys("HOSUR - HSRA")
And also,
I know to match those words inside the "" but how would I match those words which are outside the double quote?
Input
# 0 = {String#3546} "Policy Duration (Days)"
# 1 = {String#3547} "Related Proposal Nr."
Ouput
# 0 = {String#3546}
# 1 = {String#3547}
As per your comments, you want to match the start of the line, then any number of whitespaces on the same line, then driver and then a dot.
You need to use [[:blank:]]* (it will match any 0+ Unicode horizontal whitesdace chars). Note also, the . should be escaped to match a literal ..
Use
/^[[:blank:]]*driver\./
See the Rubular demo
Details
^ - start of a line
[[:blank:]]* - 0+ horizontal whitespace chars
driver - a literal substring
\. - a dot.
As for the second part, you may remove "..." substrings from the strings using
s.gsub(/[[:blank:]]*"[^"]*"$/, '')
See this Rubular demo
Alternatively, if you want to match a line part up to the first ", you may use
/^[^"\r\n]+/
See this Rubular demo
you can use the regex
^\s*\bdriver\.
where \b is represents a boundary. check the regex101 demo
for the 2nd part, you can replace the string inside the quotes. The remaining string would be the required string see the regex101 demo

Ruby regex | Match enclosing brackets

I'm trying to create a regex pattern to match particular sets of text in my string.
Let's assume this is the string ^foo{bar}#Something_Else
I would like to match ^foo{} skipping entirely the content of the brackets.
Until now i figured out how to get all everything with this regex here \^(\w)\{([^\}]+)} but i really don't know how to ignore the text inside the curly brackets.
Anyone has an idea? Thanks.
Update
This is the final solution:
puts script.gsub(/(\^\w+)\{([^}]+)(})/, '[BEFORE]\2[AFTER]')
Though I'd prefer this with fewer groups:
puts script.gsub(/\^\w+\{([^}]+)}/, '[BEFORE]\1[AFTER]')
Original answer
I need to replace the ^foo{} part with something else
Here is a way to do it with gsub:
s = "^foo{bar}#Something_Else"
puts s.gsub(/(.*)\^\w+\{([^}]+)}(.*)/, '\1SOMETHING ELSE\2\3')
See demo
The technique is the same: you capture the text you want to keep and just match text you want to delete, and use backreferences to restore the text you captured.
The regex matches:
(.*) - matches and captures into Group 2 as much text as possible from the start
\^\w+\{ - matches ^, 1 or more word characters, {
([^}]+) - matches and captures into Group 2 1 or more symbols other than }
} - matches the }
(.*) - and finally match and capture into Group 3 the rest of the string.
If you mean to match ^foo{} by a single match against a regex, it is impossible. A regex match only matches a substring of the original string. Since ^foo{} is not a substring of ^foo{bar}#Something_Else, you cannot match that with a single match.

ruby parametrized regular expression

I have a string like "{some|words|are|here}" or "{another|set|of|words}"
So in general the string consists of an opening curly bracket,words delimited by a pipe and a closing curly bracket.
What is the most efficient way to get the selected word of that string ?
I would like do something like this:
#my_string = "{this|is|a|test|case}"
#my_string.get_column(0) # => "this"
#my_string.get_column(2) # => "is"
#my_string.get_column(4) # => "case"
What should the method get_column contain ?
So this is the solution I like right now:
class String
def get_column(n)
self =~ /\A\{(?:\w*\|){#{n}}(\w*)(?:\|\w*)*\}\Z/ && $1
end
end
We use a regular expression to make sure that the string is of the correct format, while simultaneously grabbing the correct column.
Explanation of regex:
\A is the beginnning of the string and \Z is the end, so this regex matches the enitre string.
Since curly braces have a special meaning we escape them as \{ and \} to match the curly braces at the beginning and end of the string.
next, we want to skip the first n columns - we don't care about them.
A previous column is some number of letters followed by a vertical bar, so we use the standard \w to match a word-like character (includes numbers and underscore, but why not) and * to match any number of them. Vertical bar has a special meaning, so we have to escape it as \|. Since we want to group this, we enclose it all inside non-capturing parens (?:\w*\|) (the ?: makes it non-capturing).
Now we have n of the previous columns, so we tell the regex to match the column pattern n times using the count regex - just put a number in curly braces after a pattern. We use standard string substition, so we just put in {#{n}} to mean "match the previous pattern exactly n times.
the first non skipped column after that is the one we care about, so we put that in capturing parens: (\w*)
then we skip the rest of the columns, if any exist: (?:\|\w*)*.
Capturing the column puts it into $1, so we return that value if the regex matched. If not, we return nil, since this String has no nth column.
In general, if you wanted to have more than just words in your columns (like "{a phrase or two|don't forget about punctuation!|maybe some longer strings that have\na newline or two?}"), then just replace all the \w in the regex with [^|{}] so you can have each column contain anything except a curly-brace or a vertical bar.
Here's my previous solution
class String
def get_column(n)
raise "not a column string" unless self =~ /\A\{\w*(?:\|\w*)*\}\Z/
self[1 .. -2].split('|')[n]
end
end
We use a similar regex to make sure the String contains a set of columns or raise an error. Then we strip the curly braces from the front and back (using self[1 .. -2] to limit to the substring starting at the first character and ending at the next to last), split the columns using the pipe character (using .split('|') to create an array of columns), and then find the n'th column (using standard Array lookup with [n]).
I just figured as long as I was using the regex to verify the string, I might as well use it to capture the column.

How to remove the first 4 characters from a string if it matches a pattern in Ruby

I have the following string:
"h3. My Title Goes Here"
I basically want to remove the first four characters from the string so that I just get back:
"My Title Goes Here".
The thing is I am iterating over an array of strings and not all have the h3. part in front so I can't just ditch the first four characters blindly.
I checked the docs and the closest thing I could find was chomp, but that only works for the end of a string.
Right now I am doing this:
"h3. My Title Goes Here".reverse.chomp(" .3h").reverse
This gives me my desired output, but there has to be a better way. I don't want to reverse a string twice for no reason. Is there another method that will work?
To alter the original string, use sub!, e.g.:
my_strings = [ "h3. My Title Goes Here", "No h3. at the start of this line" ]
my_strings.each { |s| s.sub!(/^h3\. /, '') }
To not alter the original and only return the result, remove the exclamation point, i.e. use sub. In the general case you may have regular expressions that you can and want to match more than one instance of, in that case use gsub! and gsub—without the g only the first match is replaced (as you want here, and in any case the ^ can only match once to the start of the string).
You can use sub with a regular expression:
s = 'h3. foo'
s.sub!(/^h[0-9]+\. /, '')
puts s
Output:
foo
The regular expression should be understood as follows:
^ Match from the start of the string.
h A literal "h".
[0-9] A digit from 0-9.
+ One or more of the previous (i.e. one or more digits)
\. A literal period.
A space (yes, spaces are significant by default in regular expressions!)
You can modify the regular expression to suit your needs. See a regular expression tutorial or syntax guide, for example here.
A standard approach would be to use regular expressions:
"h3. My Title Goes Here".gsub /^h3\. /, '' #=> "My Title Goes Here"
gsub means globally substitute and it replaces a pattern by a string, in this case an empty string.
The regular expression is enclosed in / and constitutes of:
^ means beginning of the string
h3 is matched literally, so it means h3
\. - a dot normally means any character so we escape it with a backslash
is matched literally

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