I have created a Regex as below, but the Match method does not work correctly:
Regex regex = new Regex("(" + SearchText + ")", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
if(regex.Match(item).Success) { ... }
For example, if I set SearchText to e., and i set item to es, then Success is true.
Similarly, if have set SearchText to $ or ., then a match with 4 returns Success as true.
How come this is happening, and how can I solve this problem?
When you use a regex there are a bunch of common characters which have special meanings. For example, the period (.) character will match any character at all so if you wanted to match the words dog and dig, you could use the regex d.g.
There are MANY different special characters you can use, you should see the full .NET Regex documentation for more details.
This makes matching specific things slightly more complicated when you want to match something specific, like the end of a sentence. To match dog. you actually have to pass in dog\. as the regex to match against. You can use the Regex.Escape(string str) method to escape most simple strings, before passing them into your Regex constructor.
The other question is if you are only looking for literals, why do you use Regex at all.
string item = "bla bla e. bla";
bool result = item.Contains("e."); //returns true
Edit
Case insensitive:
result = item.IndexOf("e.", 0, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) != -1;
Related
I need a regex that will only find matches where the entire string matches my query.
For instance if I do a search for movies with the name "Red October" I only want to match on that exact title (case insensitive) but not match titles like "The Hunt For Red October". Not quite sure I know how to do this. Anyone know?
Thanks!
Try the following regular expression:
^Red October$
By default, regular expressions are case sensitive. The ^ marks the start of the matching text and $ the end.
Generally, and with default settings, ^ and $ anchors are a good way of ensuring that a regex matches an entire string.
A few caveats, though:
If you have alternation in your regex, be sure to enclose your regex in a non-capturing group before surrounding it with ^ and $:
^foo|bar$
is of course different from
^(?:foo|bar)$
Also, ^ and $ can take on a different meaning (start/end of line instead of start/end of string) if certain options are set. In text editors that support regular expressions, this is usually the default behaviour. In some languages, especially Ruby, this behaviour cannot even be switched off.
Therefore there is another set of anchors that are guaranteed to only match at the start/end of the entire string:
\A matches at the start of the string.
\Z matches at the end of the string or before a final line break.
\z matches at the very end of the string.
But not all languages support these anchors, most notably JavaScript.
I know that this may be a little late to answer this, but maybe it will come handy for someone else.
Simplest way:
var someString = "...";
var someRegex = "...";
var match = Regex.Match(someString , someRegex );
if(match.Success && match.Value.Length == someString.Length){
//pass
} else {
//fail
}
Use the ^ and $ modifiers to denote where the regex pattern sits relative to the start and end of the string:
Regex.Match("Red October", "^Red October$"); // pass
Regex.Match("The Hunt for Red October", "^Red October$"); // fail
You need to enclose your regex in ^ (start of string) and $ (end of string):
^Red October$
If the string may contain regex metasymbols (. { } ( ) $ etc), I propose to use
^\QYourString\E$
\Q starts quoting all the characters until \E.
Otherwise the regex can be unappropriate or even invalid.
If the language uses regex as string parameter (as I see in the example), double slash should be used:
^\\QYourString\\E$
Hope this tip helps somebody.
Sorry, but that's a little unclear.
From what i read, you want to do simple string compare. You don't need regex for that.
string myTest = "Red October";
bool isMatch = (myTest.ToLower() == "Red October".ToLower());
Console.WriteLine(isMatch);
isMatch = (myTest.ToLower() == "The Hunt for Red October".ToLower());
You can do it like this Exemple if i only want to catch one time the letter minus a in a string and it can be check with myRegex.IsMatch()
^[^e][e]{1}[^e]$
I need a regex that will only find matches where the entire string matches my query.
For instance if I do a search for movies with the name "Red October" I only want to match on that exact title (case insensitive) but not match titles like "The Hunt For Red October". Not quite sure I know how to do this. Anyone know?
Thanks!
Try the following regular expression:
^Red October$
By default, regular expressions are case sensitive. The ^ marks the start of the matching text and $ the end.
Generally, and with default settings, ^ and $ anchors are a good way of ensuring that a regex matches an entire string.
A few caveats, though:
If you have alternation in your regex, be sure to enclose your regex in a non-capturing group before surrounding it with ^ and $:
^foo|bar$
is of course different from
^(?:foo|bar)$
Also, ^ and $ can take on a different meaning (start/end of line instead of start/end of string) if certain options are set. In text editors that support regular expressions, this is usually the default behaviour. In some languages, especially Ruby, this behaviour cannot even be switched off.
Therefore there is another set of anchors that are guaranteed to only match at the start/end of the entire string:
\A matches at the start of the string.
\Z matches at the end of the string or before a final line break.
\z matches at the very end of the string.
But not all languages support these anchors, most notably JavaScript.
I know that this may be a little late to answer this, but maybe it will come handy for someone else.
Simplest way:
var someString = "...";
var someRegex = "...";
var match = Regex.Match(someString , someRegex );
if(match.Success && match.Value.Length == someString.Length){
//pass
} else {
//fail
}
Use the ^ and $ modifiers to denote where the regex pattern sits relative to the start and end of the string:
Regex.Match("Red October", "^Red October$"); // pass
Regex.Match("The Hunt for Red October", "^Red October$"); // fail
You need to enclose your regex in ^ (start of string) and $ (end of string):
^Red October$
If the string may contain regex metasymbols (. { } ( ) $ etc), I propose to use
^\QYourString\E$
\Q starts quoting all the characters until \E.
Otherwise the regex can be unappropriate or even invalid.
If the language uses regex as string parameter (as I see in the example), double slash should be used:
^\\QYourString\\E$
Hope this tip helps somebody.
Sorry, but that's a little unclear.
From what i read, you want to do simple string compare. You don't need regex for that.
string myTest = "Red October";
bool isMatch = (myTest.ToLower() == "Red October".ToLower());
Console.WriteLine(isMatch);
isMatch = (myTest.ToLower() == "The Hunt for Red October".ToLower());
You can do it like this Exemple if i only want to catch one time the letter minus a in a string and it can be check with myRegex.IsMatch()
^[^e][e]{1}[^e]$
From the below mentioned input string, I want to extract the values specified in {} for s:ds field. I have attached my regex pattern. Now the pattern I used for testing on http://www.regexr.com/ is:
s:ds=\\\"({[\d\w]{8}\-([\d\w]{4}\-){3}[\d\w]{12}})\\\"
and it works absolutely fine.
But the same in C# code does not work. I have also added \\ instead of \ for c# code and replaced \" with \"" . Let me know if Im doing something wrong. Below is the code snippet.
string inputString is "s:ds=\"{46C01EB7-6D43-4E2A-9267-608DE8AFA311}\" s:ds=\"{37BA4BA0-581C-40DC-A542-FFD9E99BC345}\" s:id=\"{C091E71D-4817-49BC-B120-56CE88BC52C2}\"";
string regex = #"s:ds=\\\""({[\d\w]{8}\-(?:[\d\w]{4}\-){3}[\d\w]{12}})\\\""";
MatchCollection matchCollection = Regex.Matches(layoutField, regex);
if (matchCollection.Count > 1)
{
Log.Info("Collection Found.", this);
}
If you only watch to match the values...
You should be able to just use ([\d\w]{8}\-([\d\w]{4}\-){3}[\d\w]{12}) for your expression if you only want to match the withing your gullwing braces :
string input = "s:ds=\"{46C01EB7-6D43-4E2A-9267-608DE8AFA311} ...";
// Use the following expression to just match your GUID values
string regex = #"([\d\w]{8}\-([\d\w]{4}\-){3}[\d\w]{12})";
// Store your matches
MatchCollection matchCollection = Regex.Matches(input, regex);
// Iterate through each one
foreach(var match in matchCollection)
{
// Output the match
Console.WriteLine("Collection Found : {0}", match);
}
You can see a working example of this in action here and example output demonstrated below :
If you want to only match those following s:ds...
If you only want to capture the values for s:ds sections, you could consider appending (?<=(s:ds=""{)) to the front of your expression, which would be a look-behind that would only match values that were preceded by "s:ds={" :
string regex = #"(?<=(s:ds=""{))([\d\w]{8}\-([\d\w]{4}\-){3}[\d\w]{12})";
You can see an example of this approach here and demonstrated below (notice it doesn't match the s:id element :
Another Consideration
Currently you are using \w to match "word" characters within your expression and while this might work for your uses, it will match all digits \d, letters a-zA-z and underscores _. It's unlikely that you would need some of these, so you may want to consider revising your character sets to use just what you would expect like [A-Z\d] to only match uppercase letters and numbers or [0-9A-Fa-f] if you are only expected GUID values (e.g. hex).
Looks like you might be over-escaping.
Give this a shot:
#"s:ds=\""({[\d\w]{8}\-([\d\w]{4}\-){3}[\d\w]{12}})\"""
I'm quite the Regex novice, but I have a series of strings similar to this "[$myVar.myVar_STATE]" I need to replace the 2nd myVar that begins with a period and ends with an underscore. I need it to match it exactly, as sometimes I'll have "[$myVar.myVar_moreMyVar_STATE]" and in that case I wouldn't want to replace anything.
I've tried things like "\b.myVar_\b", "\.\bmyVar_\b" and several more, all to no luck.
How about this:
\[\$myVar\.([^_]+)_STATE\]
Matches:
[$myVar.myVar_STATE] // matches and captures 'myvar'
[$myVar.myVar_moreMyVar_STATE] // no match
Working regex example:
http://regex101.com/r/yM9jQ3
Or if _STATE was variable, you could use this: (as long as the text in the STATE part does not have underscores in it.)
\[\$myVar\.([^_]+)_[^_]+\]
Working regex example:
http://regex101.com/r/kW8oE1
Edit: Conforming to OP's comments below, This should be what he's going for:
(\[\$myVar\.)([^_]+)(_[^_]+\])
Regex replace example:
http://regex101.com/r/pU6yL8
C#
var pattern = #"(\[\$myVar\.)([^_]+)(_[^_]+\])";
var replaced = Regex.Replace(input, pattern, "$1"+ newVar + "$3")
What about something like:
.*.(myVar_).*
This looks for anything then a . and "myVar_" followed by anything.
It matches:
"[$myVar.myVar_STATE]"
And only the first myVar_ here:
"[$myVar.myVar_moremyVar_STATE]"
See it in action.
This should do it:
\[\$myVar\.(.*?)_STATE\]
You can use this little trick to pick out the groups, and build the replacement at the end, like so:
var replacement = "something";
var input = #"[$myVar.myVar_STATE]";
var pattern = #"(\[\$myVar\.)(.*?)_(.*?)]";
var replaced = Regex.Replace(input, pattern, "$1"+ replacement + "_$2]")
C# already has builtin method to do this
string text = ".asda_";
Response.Write((text.StartsWith(".") && text.EndsWith("_")));
Is Regex really required?
string input = "[$myVar.myVar_STATE]";
string oldVar = "myVar";
string newVar = "myNewVar";
string result = input.Replace("." + oldVar + "_STATE]", "." + newVar + "_STATE]");
In case "STATE" is a variable part, then we'll need to use Regex. The easiest way is to use this Regex pattern which matches a position between a prefix and a suffix. Prefix and suffix are used for searching but are not included in the resulting match:
(?<=prefix)find(?=suffix)
result =
Regex.Replace(input, #"(?<=\.)" + Regex.Escape(oldVar) + "(?=_[A-Z]+])", newVar);
Explanation:
The prefix part is \., which stand for ".".
The find part is the escaped old variable to be replaced. Regex escaping makes sure that characters with a special meaning in Regex are escaped.
The suffix part is _[A-Z]+], an underscore followed by at least one letter followed by "]". Note: the second ] needs not to be escaped. An opening bracket [ would have to be escaped like this: \[. We cannot use \w for word characters for the STATE-part as \w includes underscores. You might have to adapt the [A-Z] part to exactly match all possible states (e.g. if state has digits, use [A-Z0-9].
Friends,
I want to match a string like
"int lnum[];" so I am trying to match it with a pattern like this
[A-Za-z_0-9] [A-Za-z_0-9]\[\]
but it does not seem to work.
I looked up rules at http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/46/CSharp-Regular-Expressions-Cheat-Sheet
string pJavaLine = "int lnum[]";
match = Regex.Match(pJavaLine, #"[A-Za-z_0-9] [A-Za-z_0-9]\[\] ", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
if (match.Success) {
// Finally, we get the Group value and display it.
string key = match.Groups[1].Value;
Console.WriteLine(key);
}
the match.Success returns false.
Would anybody please let me know a possible way to get this.
Each of your character classes, like [A-Za-z_0-9], matches only a single character. If you want to match more than one character, you need to add something to the end. For example, [A-Za-z_0-9]+ -- the + means 1 or more of these. You could also use * for 0 or more, or specify a range, like {2,5} for 2-5 characters.
That said, you can use this pattern to match that string:
[A-Za-z_0-9]+ [A-Za-z_0-9]+\[\]
The \w is loosely equivalent to [A-Za-z_0-9] (see link in jessehouwing's comment below), so you can probably simply use:
\w+ \w+\[\]
Check here for more info on the standard Character Classes.