I am looking to build a ruby regex to match multiple occurrences of a pattern and return them in an array. The pattern is simply: [[.+]]. That is, two left brackets, one or more characters, followed by two right brackets.
This is what I have done:
str = "Some random text[[lead:first_name]] and more stuff [[client:last_name]]"
str.match(/\[\[(.+)\]\]/).captures
The regex above doesn't work because it returns this:
["lead:first_name]] and another [[client:last_name"]
When what I wanted was this:
["lead:first_name", "client:last_name"]
I thought if I used a noncapturing group that for sure it should solve the issue:
str.match(/(?:\[\[(.+)\]\])+/).captures
But the noncapturing group returns the same exact wrong output. Any idea on how I can resolve my issue?
The problem with your regex is that the .+ part is "greedy", meaning that if the regex matches both a smaller and larger part of the string, it will capture the larger part (more about greedy regexes).
In Ruby (and most regex syntaxes), you can qualify your + quantifier with a ? to make it non-greedy. So your regex would become /(?:\[\[(.+?)\]\])+/.
However, you'll notice this still doesn't work for what you want to do. The Ruby capture groups just don't work inside a repeating group. For your problem, you'll need to use scan:
"[[a]][[ab]][[abc]]".scan(/\[\[(.+?)\]\]/).flatten
=> ["a", "ab", "abc"]
Try this:
=> str.match(/\[\[(.*)\]\].*\[\[(.*)\]\]/).captures
=> ["lead:first_name", "client:last_name"]
With many occurrences:
=> str
=> "Some [[lead:first_name]] random text[[lead:first_name]] and more [[lead:first_name]] stuff [[client:last_name]]"
=> str.scan(/\[(\w+:\w+)\]/)
=> [["lead:first_name"], ["lead:first_name"], ["lead:first_name"], ["client:last_name"]]
I need to extract a string 'MT/23232' I have written the below code, but
it's not working, Can any one help me here?
'Policy created with MT/1212'
'Policy created with MT/121212'
'Policy created with MT/21212121212'
I have written this code
msg="MT/33235"
id = msg.scan(/MT/\d+/\d+/)[0]
But it's not working for me, Can any one help me to extract this string?
You need to escape the forward slash which exists next to MT in your regex and you don't need to have a forward slash after \d+ . And also i suggest you to add a lookbehind, so that you get a clean result. (?<=\s) Positive lookbehind which asserts that the match must be preceded by a space character.
msg.scan(/(?<=\s)MT\/\d+/)[0]
If you don't care about the preceding character then the below regex would be fine.
msg.scan(/MT\/\d+/)[0]
Example:
> msg = 'Policy created with MT/21212121212'
=> "Policy created with MT/21212121212"
> msg.scan(/(?<=\s)MT\/\d+/)[0]
=> "MT/21212121212"
> msg.match(/(?<=\s)MT\/\d+/)[0]
=> "MT/21212121212"
your_string.scan(/\sMT.*$/).last.strip
If your required substring can be anywhere in the string, then:
your_string.scan(/\bMT\/\d+\b/).last.strip # "\b" is for word boundaries
Or you can specify the acceptable digits this way:
your_string.scan(/\bMT\/[0-9]+\b/).last.strip
Lastly, if the string format is going to remain as you specified, then:
your_string.split.last
http://something.com/bOhxBeD,SyhyTGi,TMDDSIB,U72gx2J,kQTIRy9,7VXgGDw,eSxIcK6,S5oNlnn,WBHHsLk,BdMGd2d,U9kNlsF,cHVyc7Y,D83kaJ5,cLWgdSO,iWtCIF3,ount8L6
I have tried to get the value: bOhxBeD, SyhyTGi and so on. This is what I come up with ( yes fairly simple ) /([a-zA-Z0-9]{7})/, it seems to work with PCRE:
([a-zA-Z0-9]{7})
Debuggex Demo
But when it comes to Ruby, I use it like this :
str.match(/([a-zA-Z0-9]{7})/)
#<MatchData "bOhxBeD" 1:"bOhxBeD">
it doesn't seem to work. Can anyone point out what's wrong with this regex ? Thanks
You need to add word boundary \b inorder to match an exact 7 alphanumeric characters.
\b[a-zA-Z0-9]{7}\b
DEMO
irb(main):006:0> "http://something.com/bOhxBeD,SyhyTGi,TMDDSIB,U72gx2J,kQTIRy9,7VXgGDw,eSxIcK6,S5oNlnn,WBHHsLk,BdMGd2d,U9kNlsF,cHVyc7Y,D83kaJ5,cLWgdSO,iWtCIF3,ount8L6".scan(/\b([a-zA-Z0-9]{7})\b/)
=> [["bOhxBeD"], ["SyhyTGi"], ["TMDDSIB"], ["U72gx2J"], ["kQTIRy9"], ["7VXgGDw"], ["eSxIcK6"], ["S5oNlnn"], ["WBHHsLk"], ["BdMGd2d"], ["U9kNlsF"], ["cHVyc7Y"], ["D83kaJ5"], ["cLWgdSO"], ["iWtCIF3"], ["ount8L6"]]
(?!.*?\/)[a-zA-Z0-9]{7}
Is should be this.Or else it will pick 7 letter words from link as well."somethi" will be in ans.But i guess that is not required.
match only picks up the first match.
You can try the global version of match which is scan.
You can use scan to search string not containing specific characters using [^...]:
str.scan(/[^\/\.\,]+/)[3..-1]
#=> ["bOhxBeD", "SyhyTGi", "TMDDSIB", "U72gx2J", "kQTIRy9", "7VXgGDw", "eSxIcK6", "S5oNlnn", "WBHHsLk", "BdMGd2d", "U9kNlsF", "cHVyc7Y", "D83kaJ5", "cLWgdSO", "iWtCIF3", "ount8L6"]
Update:
If you know that the strings between the comma are always 7 characters, you can use this instead:
str.scan(/[^\/\.\,]{7}/)[1..-1]
it happens because your regexp match just one element which contain 7 chars, nothing more,
as simple solution could be:
str.match(/\/(.*)\z/)[1].split(',')
You could use String#[] and String#split:
str[/.*\/(.*)/,1].split(',')
#=> ["bOhxBeD", "SyhyTGi", "TMDDSIB", "U72gx2J", "kQTIRy9", "7VXgGDw",
# "eSxIcK6", "S5oNlnn", "WBHHsLk", "BdMGd2d", "U9kNlsF", "cHVyc7Y",
# "D83kaJ5", "cLWgdSO", "iWtCIF3", "ount8L6"]
.*\/ in the regex, "greedy" as it is, will consume characters up to and including the last forward slash in the string. Capture group #1 (.*) sucks up the remainder of the string and, due to the presence of ,1, returns it. split(',') then breaks up the string to give you the desired array.
Another way:
str[str[/.*\//].size..-1].split(',')
Apparently I still don't understand exactly how it works ...
Here is my problem: I'm trying to match numbers in strings such as:
910 -6.258000 6.290
That string should gives me an array like this:
[910, -6.2580000, 6.290]
while the string
blabla9999 some more text 1.1
should not be matched.
The regex I'm trying to use is
/([-]?\d+[.]?\d+)/
but it doesn't do exactly that. Could someone help me ?
It would be great if the answer could clarify the use of the parenthesis in the matching.
Here's a pattern that works:
/^[^\d]+?\d+[^\d]+?\d+[\.]?\d+$/
Note that [^\d]+ means at least one non digit character.
On second thought, here's a more generic solution that doesn't need to deal with regular expressions:
str.gsub(/[^\d.-]+/, " ").split.collect{|d| d.to_f}
Example:
str = "blabla9999 some more text -1.1"
Parsed:
[9999.0, -1.1]
The parenthesis have different meanings.
[] defines a character class, that means one character is matched that is part of this class
() is defining a capturing group, the string that is matched by this part in brackets is put into a variable.
You did not define any anchors so your pattern will match your second string
blabla9999 some more text 1.1
^^^^ here ^^^ and here
Maybe this is more what you wanted
^(\s*-?\d+(?:\.\d+)?\s*)+$
See it here on Regexr
^ anchors the pattern to the start of the string and $ to the end.
it allows Whitespace \s before and after the number and an optional fraction part (?:\.\d+)? This kind of pattern will be matched at least once.
maybe /(-?\d+(.\d+)?)+/
irb(main):010:0> "910 -6.258000 6.290".scan(/(\-?\d+(\.\d+)?)+/).map{|x| x[0]}
=> ["910", "-6.258000", "6.290"]
str = " 910 -6.258000 6.290"
str.scan(/-?\d+\.?\d+/).map(&:to_f)
# => [910.0, -6.258, 6.29]
If you don't want integers to be converted to floats, try this:
str = " 910 -6.258000 6.290"
str.scan(/-?\d+\.?\d+/).map do |ns|
ns[/\./] ? ns.to_f : ns.to_i
end
# => [910, -6.258, 6.29]
In Ruby, what regex will strip out all but a desired string if present in the containing string? I know about /[^abc]/ for characters, but what about strings?
Say I have the string "group=4&type_ids[]=2&type_ids[]=7&saved=1" and want to retain the pattern group=\d, if it is present in the string using only a regex?
Currently, I am splitting on & and then doing a select with matching condition =~ /group=\d/ on the resulting enumerable collection. It works fine, but I'd like to know the regex to do this more directly.
Simply:
part = str[/group=\d+/]
If you want only the numbers, then:
group_str = str[/group=(\d+)/,1]
If you want only the numbers as an integer, then:
group_num = str[/group=(\d+)/,1].to_i
Warning: String#[] will return nil if no match occurs, and blindly calling nil.to_i always returns 0.
You can try:
$str =~ s/.*(group=\d+).*/\1/;
Typically I wouldn't really worry too much about a complex regex. Simply break the string down into smaller parts and it becomes easier:
asdf = "group=4&type_ids[]=2&type_ids[]=7&saved=1"
asdf.split('&').select{ |q| q['group'] } # => ["group=4"]
Otherwise, you can use regex a bunch of different ways. Here's two ways I tend to use:
asdf.scan(/group=\d+/) # => ["group=4"]
asdf[/(group=\d+)/, 1] # => "group=4"
Try:
str.match(/group=\d+/)[0]