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Prevent Regex from devouring optional part of the match

I'v searched extensively but I can't find a simple answer to this and my Regex experience is limited. I'd appreciate a simple solution that is explained, please.
I have a very large string and I need to substitute certain words in it as follows:
Example: wherever you find the string "LINK-ABC" make it "LINK_ABC".
I wrote my Regex Match and Replace strings:
#"LINK-ABC", #"LINK_ABC" and it worked.
But there were a couple of things I had not recognized.
There COULD be words in the file like this:
LINK-ABC-DEF LINK-ABC-GHI-JKL ... and so on.
So I get "LINK_ABC-DEF" etc. (which is NOT what I want; this should have remained intact...)
Once I realized the problem it seemed that what I REALLY wanted was to recognize ONLY the word being matched and leave any cases where it was in combination with something else, unchanged. It seemed to me that if I checked for a space or period on the Match word, that should do it, so...
#"LINK-ABC[ |\\.]",#"LINK_ABC"
... and now I have stumbled.
Sample string:
link-xxx link-aaa-sss link-xxx-bbb link-xxx link-xxx.
Match/Replace string:
link-xxx[ |\\.],link_xxx
Result string:
link_xxxlink-aaa-sss link-xxx-bbb link_xxxlink_xxx
The replacements are correct, BUT the trailing comma or period has been "devoured" and so the result string is wrong.
Is there a way that I can match so that if it matches on space, the replacement will have a space and if it matches on a period, the replacement will have a period? I s'pose I could do 2 separate matches but I'd like to increase my understanding of Regex and do it more elegantly if it is possible.

You should be able to achieve the behavior you want with "capture groups"
var matchstring = #"link-xxx([ \.]|$)";
var fixstr = #"link_xxx$1";
The parenthesis around the last part of the matchstring will retain whatever matched inside it, and the $1 in the fixstr will substitute whatever was captured by that group.
I've also modified your punctuation section a little bit, presuming you want to replace a match if it happens to be the last word in the input (by adding the |$). A | inside a character class [] is a literal | character, so I removed it assuming you don't actually expect that in your input.

Regex: How to match the "smallest" text matching my regex? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Regular expression to stop at first match
(9 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
I have this gigantic ugly string:
J0000000: Transaction A0001401 started on 8/22/2008 9:49:29 AM
J0000010: Project name: E:\foo.pf
J0000011: Job name: MBiek Direct Mail Test
J0000020: Document 1 - Completed successfully
I'm trying to extract pieces from it using regex. In this case, I want to grab everything after Project Name up to the part where it says J0000011: (the 11 is going to be a different number every time).
Here's the regex I've been playing with:
Project name:\s+(.*)\s+J[0-9]{7}:
The problem is that it doesn't stop until it hits the J0000020: at the end.
How do I make the regex stop at the first occurrence of J[0-9]{7}?

Make .* non-greedy by adding '?' after it:
Project name:\s+(.*?)\s+J[0-9]{7}:

Using non-greedy quantifiers here is probably the best solution, also because it is more efficient than the greedy alternative: Greedy matches generally go as far as they can (here, until the end of the text!) and then trace back character after character to try and match the part coming afterwards.
However, consider using a negative character class instead:
Project name:\s+(\S*)\s+J[0-9]{7}:
\S means “everything except a whitespace and this is exactly what you want.

Well, ".*" is a greedy selector. You make it non-greedy by using ".*?" When using the latter construct, the regex engine will, at every step it matches text into the "." attempt to match whatever make come after the ".*?". This means that if for instance nothing comes after the ".*?", then it matches nothing.
Here's what I used. s contains your original string. This code is .NET specific, but most flavors of regex will have something similar.
string m = Regex.Match(s, #"Project name: (?<name>.*?) J\d+").Groups["name"].Value;

I would also recommend you experiment with regular expressions using "Expresso" - it's a utility a great (and free) utility for regex editing and testing.
One of its upsides is that its UI exposes a lot of regex functionality that people unexprienced with regex might not be familiar with, in a way that it would be easy for them to learn these new concepts.
For example, when building your regex using the UI, and choosing "*", you have the ability to check the checkbox "As few as possible" and see the resulting regex, as well as test its behavior, even if you were unfamiliar with non-greedy expressions before.
Available for download at their site:
http://www.ultrapico.com/Expresso.htm
Express download:
http://www.ultrapico.com/ExpressoDownload.htm

(Project name:\s+[A-Z]:(?:\\w+)+.[a-zA-Z]+\s+J[0-9]{7})(?=:)
This will work for you.
Adding (?:\\w+)+.[a-zA-Z]+ will be more restrictive instead of .*

Extracting words from lines that match different patterns

I'm monitoring incoming e-mail subjects, and each subject may contain a particularly formatted code inside it which I used to reference something else with down the line.
These codes can be anywhere within the string, and sometimes not at all - and so the problem I'm having is my lack of RegEx skills (which I assume is the best option for this solution?).
An example of a subject would be:
"Please refer to reference MZ5051CLA"
or
"Attention for Mr Danshi, RE. 11123MTX"
The codes I'm looking to extract in these scenarios are "MZ5051CLA" and "11123MTX".
The format of MZ5051CLA will be:
- Always starts with "MZ"
- Follows by a number
- Always ends with "CLA"
Is there a simple way to evaluate the subject as a whole and extract any words that match the codes only?
I've looked at various solutions to my problem here on SO, but they're either overly complicated or I can't quite relate.
Edit:
As ShashishChandra pointed out, the idea is to monitor multiple mailboxes, each with their own code formats. So my idea was to implement a regex setting for each mailbox.
Perhaps this was important to mention initially, since a solution to catch all formats in one regex won't work. Apologies for that.

Try this regex:
^.*(?:(MZ\d+CLA)|RE\.\s+(\d+MTX))$
Demo

The below regex would match only the first string MZ5051CLA
\bMZ\d+CLA\b
DEMO
But this would match the both strings MZ5051CLA and 11123MTX,
\b[A-Z0-9]+$
All alphanumeric characters present at the last of a line are matched.
DEMO
This would get you the Alphanumeric string which starts with MZ and ends with CLA or starts with a number and ends with mtx
(?:\b[A-Z0-9]+$|\b\d+MTX\b)
DEMO

Both Codes in One Pattern
It seems that the codes must include at least one uppercase letter and at least one digit. For that kind of pattern, a password-validation technique is commonly used, and I would suggest:
\b(?=[A-Z0-9]*[A-Z])[A-Z0-9]*[0-9][A-Z0-9]*
In the demo, see how only the correct groups are matched. Of course false positives are possible.
Reference
Lookahead and Lookbehind Zero-Length Assertions
Mastering Lookahead and Lookbehind

So, in that case if you don't mind false positives, then use: /^(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[A-Z])([A-Z0-9]+)$/. This will work well in general.

I need a regular expression to convert US tel number to link

Basically, the input field is just a string. People input their phone number in various formats. I need a regular expression to find and convert those numbers into links.
Input examples:
(201) 555-1212
(201)555-1212
201-555-1212
555-1212
Here's what I want:
(201) 555-1212 - Notice the space is gone
(201)555-1212
201-555-1212
555-1212
I know it should be more robust than just removing spaces, but it is for an internal web site that my employees will be accessing from their iPhone. So, I'm willing to "just get it working."
Here's what I have so far in C# (which should show you how little I know about regular expressions):
strchk = Regex.Replace(strchk, #"\b([\d{3}\-\d{4}|\d{3}\-\d{3}\-\d{4}|\(\d{3}\)\d{3}\-\d{4}])\b", "<a href='tel:$&'>$&</a>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
Can anyone help me by fixing this or suggesting a better way to do this?
EDIT:
Thanks everyone. Here's what I've got so far:
strchk = Regex.Replace(strchk, #"\b(\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{4}|\(\d{3}\)\s*\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{4}|\d{3}[-\.\s]\d{4})\b", "<a href='tel:$1'>$1</a>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
It is picking up just about everything EXCEPT those with (nnn) area codes, with or without spaces between it and the 7 digit number. It does pick up the 7 digit number and link it that way. However, if the area code is specified it doesn't get matched. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
Second Edit:
Got it working now. All I did was remove the \b from the start of the string.

Remove the [] and add \s* (zero or more whitespace characters) around each \-.
Also, you don't need to escape the -. (You can take out the \ from \-)
Explanation: [abcA-Z] is a character group, which matches a, b, c, or any character between A and Z.
It's not what you're trying to do.
Edits
In response to your updated regex:
Change [-\.\s] to [-\.\s]+ to match one or more of any of those characters (eg, a - with spaces around it)
The problem is that \b doesn't match the boundary between a space and a (.

Afaik, no phone enters the other characters, so why not replace [^0-9] with '' ?

Here's a regex I wrote for finding phone numbers:
(\+?\d[-\.\s]?)?(\(\d{3}\)\s?|\d{3}[-\.\s]?)\d{3}[-\.\s]?\d{4}
It's pretty flexible... allows a variety of formats.
Then, instead of killing yourself trying to replace it w/out spaces using a bunch of back references, instead pass the match to a function and just strip the spaces as you wanted.
C#/.net should have a method that allows a function as the replace argument...
Edit: They call it a `MatchEvaluator. That example uses a delegate, but I'm pretty sure you could use the slightly less verbose
(m) => m.Value.Replace(' ', '')
or something. working from memory here.

Only match regular expression in c# string

I am not too good with regular expressions so this might be an obvious question.
I want my expression to match if a certain number of characters are found and fail if any extra characters are present. For example if I have a string that should have 4 digits the following should be true.
1234 - match
ab1234cd - does not match
012345 - does not match
What I have so far is \d{4} but my understanding is that this would just match any string that has 4 digits together in it anywhere. I want to match only if a string contains 4 digits and nothing else.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Use ^ and $ to mark the start/end of the string.

Depending on how you are implementing it (single line mode or multiline mode) you can use something similar to:
^\d{4}$
To only match the (beginning of the string) four digits (end of string).

\b[0-9]{4}\b or ^\d{4}$ should both work. Maybe I could expand a little bit on what GrayWizardx said (just in case you do not use Regular Expressions in C# that much), the regular expressions provided above look for lines that have only 4 digits. By default (if memory serves me well), the regular expression engine looks at the first line only, so if you have a string made from more than 1 line and you would like to check the entire string (for instance, the string has been loaded from a file), you would add the option RegexOptions.MultiLine. in this way, the engine will take a look at the other lines as well.
Hope this has been helpful :)

I believe \b[0-9]{4}\b should do the trick.