Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with regexp

To the (regexpmobile|globmobile) Robin!

idiopath — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:22:28 -0800

Can I use shell style globs or something like regexp to search for online content? I want to be able to search for '*mobile' or '.*mobile$' or something similar and get something like "bookmobile, popemobile, spacemobile, pimpmobile, weinermobile ..." as a result.

I am looking for a general way to search for things like this based on internet (particularly web) usage, not just a list of compound words that end in mobile.

down by the river - regex and poker cards

the_very_hungry_caterpillar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:40:58 -0800

looking for regex expert to help with replacing playing card references Hello mefite regex experts!

I am trying to process a string to find and replace playing card references. When texas hold ‘em poker players express playing cards they use a number of formats, for example ‘7-7’ to indicate a pair of sevens or ‘7-8-9’ to show the three card flop. They also show cards with their suits, for example ‘kc-kd-kh’ to show king clubs, king diamonds and king hearts. However, the ‘-‘ are arbitrary, they could use spaces ‘kc kd kh’, commas etc. AND they are variable length, so I need to find ‘A-A’ ‘7-8-9-10-j’ and ‘7c-8c-9c-10c’.

I want to find these strings and replace them with HTML (using ColdFusion) and I am looking to the regexp which will allow me to process things like:

‘xCx’ or ‘xCxCx’ or ‘xCxCxCx’ or ‘xCxCxCxCx’ or ‘xCxCxCxCxCx’ where ‘x’ is any one of a number of special characters (space, comma, !, period, -, etc.) and ‘C’ is one of 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,j,q,k,a. (casing to be ignored)

I also need to find and replace ‘xCSx’, ‘xCSxCSx’, etc, where ‘S’ is the suit – c, h, d or s.

One further complication is that when I replace the suit (‘S’) string, I need to replace it with the HTML symbol - &spades; etc. and wrap a class around it so ‘ KC ’ would become ‘ [span class=’card’] K [span class=’blacksuit’]♣[/span] [/span] ’.

(I am using [ ] instead of angle brackets to preserver the formatting!).

Is this possible? Is it too much for a single regexp??? Thanks for all help!

Shell script handling CSV columns

fightoplankton — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:30:20 -0800

I'm using a shell script to handle some excel docs by converting to csv and reformatting it a little bit. I'm having some difficulty going on with the next part of the script. Some help would be great. :) CURRENT SCRIPT:
#!/bin/sh
ls *.xls
echo "Enter filename for excel input file: "
read filen
xls2csv -x "$filen"".xls" -b WINDOWS-1252 -c "$filen"".csv" -a UTF-8
sed '1,3d' "$filen".csv >"$filen"_temp.csv
cut -d "," -f 1,4- "$filen"_temp.csv > "$filen"_temp2.csv
awk -F, '{sub($NF, "");print}' "$filen"_temp2.csv > "$filen"_temp3.csv
sed 's/.$//' "$filen"_temp3.csv > "$filen"_fixed.csv
rm "$filen".csv
rm "$filen"_temp.csv
rm "$filen"_temp2.csv
rm "$filen"_temp3.csv
echo "$filen"".xls corrected and saved as ""$filen""_fixed.csv"

EXAMPLE OUTPUT (first three lines only):
"Device ID","1) S31 Which best describes how you answered the online reading comprehension quiz?","2) S32 Which best describes how you answered the online timed retrieval quiz?","3) B19. If you want your product to be easy to find in the supermarket then you should make its container","4) C19. So that he can shift attention between the radio and his incessantly talking girl friend when she is in the car, Joe adjusts his radio","5) B20. Early selection is most likely to occur for","6) C20. Early selection for a red target is most likely to occur when there is","7) B21. In a lexical decision task, when the target is a bird name, e.g. robin, it is usually preceded by the prime BODY but is sometimes preceded by the prime BIRD.","8) C21. In a lexical decision task, when the target is a dog name, e.g. collie, it is usually preceded by the prime CAR but is sometimes preceded by the prime DOG.","9) B23. Suppose that that you see a brief display with 12 colored letters: 4 red, 4 white, and 4 blue. At the offset of the display you hear tone. A tone instructs you to report only the letters of a particular color: high for red, medium for white, and low for blue. About how many letters do you report?","10) B22. Sperling (1960) found that partial report produced the highest estimate of the number of available letters when the tone occurred ","11) C23. According to the logic of Sperling’s (1960) partial report method, an observer who reports three letters from a row in a 4 x 4 display that was cued at the display’s offset must have seen at least","12) C22. Sperling (1960) found that the greatest difference between full and partial report in the number available of letters was when the tone occurred ____ milliseconds after the offset of the visual display"
96A39,6,4,"4 c","4 c","5 c","5 c","5 c","4 i","3 c","1 c","1 i","5 i"
1E90A4,5,3,"4 c","4 c","5 c","5 c","2 i","5 c","3 c","1 c","4 i","4 i"

First, I need to remove the numbering of the questions from the first line. So "1) S31 Which best describes how you answered the online reading comprehension quiz?" would become "S31 Which best describes how you answered the online reading comprehension quiz?"

Next I need to remove an entire column if its row header doesn't begin with either B or C or is the "Device ID" column. For example, column starting with B19 is kept, the C23 is kept, and"Device ID" column is kept. The column with the question starting S31 must be entirely removed.

Thanks.

URL rewrite in IIS7: make foo.com/bah/ redirect to example.com/foo/bah/

furtive — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:10:29 -0800

Help me with a URL rewrite in IIS7 I want to implement a rewrite in IIS that would allow the following without having to create a new rule for each one.

www.foo.com/books/ redirects to www.example.com/foo/books/
www.foo.com/films/ redirects to www.example.com/foo/films/
www.foo.com/etc/ redirects to www.example.com/foo/etc/
www.foo.com/etc/etc/ redirects to www.example.com/foo/etc/etc/

I am familiar with the steps in using url rewrite module in IIS7 if that makes passing on instructions a bit easier.

Regular Expression Ninja

JPowers — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:26:19 -0800

I want to become a regular expression ninja (a black belt). Where should I start? I'd prefer something interactive (vs. a book or blog post), like a website where I can test them out. I found this site, and it's OK, but are there any others to choose from?

Regexp seems great but how do I output the result?

ilike — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:28:56 -0800

I have a found out a regular expression that searches for a specific bit of text i want to extract from a html document (product names) in notepad++. Now i want to put all the matches of my expression in a new file. Can this be done? I tried using the macro recorder but didnt manage to find a solutions since it always go back to the first match. I also tried cygwin grep but never got it to work (I typed "grep 'expression' file" but it returned the whole lines, not only the match).

I also have excel if it will help.

How to make regular expressions work with track changes?

Partial Law — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:42:09 -0800

How can I make Microsoft Word's Find-and-Replace feature work properly with regular expressions when Track Changes is on? I'm working on a document containing a significant number of citations with page ranges. Many of those page ranges are separated by hyphens, and I need them to be separated by en dashes instead.

So I'm using Find and Replace with regular expressions like so:
Find what: ([0-9]{1,5})-([0-9]{1,5})
Replace with: \1–\2

Here's the problem: If I run Replace All on the test sentence, "Read pages 35-66, 87-92, & 105-22," I get back "Read pages 35–66, 87–92, & 105–22." Perfect. But if I turn on Track Changes and run it, I get "Read pages 3566–, 8792–, & 10522–." I need these changes to be tracked. Am I doomed to doing them by hand?
I realize how this question looks to people who aren't grammar nerds or law students. Trust me when I say that there is a difference, that the difference matters, and that the changes have to be tracked.

Python version of this Perl 4-line regexp script?

neustile — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 16:46:11 -0800

Convert perl to python: I am very comfortable with regular expressions but I need help converting an implementation of them from Perl to Python. I have an example Perl script below that opens a file, scans through it one line at a time, does a s// replace, then finds a string in the result and stores it in another variable. I would love to just have a working Python version of this for my edification-- and if you have any "Perl to Python" tutorial links I'd love to see them. This code doesn't do much but it's a prime example of the sort of cruft I write in Perl every day for little things. I know about re.match and re.search but how do I do the rest?



open(L,"/tmp/A");

while(<L>) {

     s/\#\#\#//;

     if(/^ {1,3}[0-9]{1,3}\. http\:\/\/(.*)/) { print $1; }

}

Is there a regexp for Excel?

furtive — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:49:07 -0800

ExcelFilter: How do I convert a column of names formatted Smith, John into John Smith. Feasible?

Dealing with HTML Parsing Misery?

Captain_Tenille — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 15:01:48 -0800

I need to write something (in perl) to shorten the text of a link if it's a URL, but only a URL. I've played with a variety of regexps and banged my head against HTML::Parser, but I've gotten no love. Help! As far as regexps, go, I've done OK with /\(.*?)\< \/a\>/gi for getting the link text in question out, and modifying it isn't a problem.

The problem arises when I try to put it back. All I've been able to do is either only replace part of the orginal link OR I get stuck in an endless loop. I've been escaping my > and < signs, but that doesn't seem to help at all. for examples of what i've been trying (where in each $z is a copy of the original $1 from the first regexp, and $modtxt is the text i want to replace), tt>s#">$z\< #$modtxt\#/tt> will replace the text, but mungs up the tag so the initial A tag isn't closed before the ending tag. s#">$z\< #\\>$modtxt\< #/tt>, on the other hand, gets stuck in an endless loop. I've been googling and banging my head against this for several days, and while I think I must be overlooking something really simple, I can't figure out what it is. Thus, I turn to Ask.Me for assistance. (btw, getting those regexps through was a surprisingly difficult undertaking)

(How|Where) does one find Google's (guide|help) on (searching|querying) using regular expressions?

Gyan — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 04:34:41 -0800

Well, what do you know, err.. what do I know, Google does support some sort of regular expressions. However, I can't find the usage guide. Anyone?