Regex examples

[Ashjuk]

Originally Posted by theducks

id=".+?"
would find ID= with any ID value between quotes

Thanks.

That was one of the suggestions I had found by searching for how to match any string.

I note that the expression above is not in brackets. I think that when I was trying I put it it inside brackets, which is probably why it did not work for me.

I am very much a novice when it comes to regex.

[BillPearl]

Originally Posted by Ashjuk

I have a book that contains a lot of complex IDs that I am trying to replace with simple ones via a regex find and replace.

The IDs have strings like this - F8901-6c93446a08e5490e8e6b029bcac88fe9

I know how to use [a-z]+ and [0-9]+ but I don't know how to relate that to these complex strings. Unfortunately they appear to be completely random without a common start or end character.

I have tried a few examples that I found by searching on-line, but nothing seems to work for me.

All help gratefully received.

For a string of letters and numbers, everything
([^>]+)(.*?)
eg.
<a name="Chapter_LIII" id="Chapter_LIII"></a>
<a([^>]+)(.*?)></a>

In you case you are using id="([^>]+)(.*?)"

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Ashjuk

Thanks.

That was one of the suggestions I had found by searching for how to match any string.

I note that the expression above is not in brackets. I think that when I was trying I put it it inside brackets, which is probably why it did not work for me.

I am very much a novice when it comes to regex.

( ) is a capture
[ ] is a set/range of possibilities
{ } is number of repetitions
Get yourself a REGEX cheat sheet

[Ashjuk]

Thanks all.

Looks like I will have to start studying up on REGEX

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

id=".+?"
would find ID= with any ID value between quotes

What I use is id="(.*)"

[DiapDealer]

id="[^"]+"

[Ashjuk]

This is why I find REGEX so confusing.

When I was searching various REGEX sites for the code I could not find a clear answer, and it appears from your replies there are numerous ways of achieving the same result.

Becky - "[A-Fa-f0-9-]+"
theducks - ".+?"
BillPearl - "([^>]+)(.*?)"
JSWolf - "(.*)"
and
DiapDealer - "[^"]+"

I only tried Becky's solution, which worked perfectly, but I assume all the above would have achieved the same result.

So I'm now even more confused. My poor septuagenarian brain is never going to cope

But thanks to everyone for their suggestions - I have noted them all for future reference.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ashjuk

This is why I find REGEX so confusing.

When I was searching various REGEX sites for the code I could not find a clear answer, and it appears from your replies there are numerous ways of achieving the same result.

Becky - "[A-Fa-f0-9-]+"
theducks - ".+?"
BillPearl - "([^>]+)(.*?)"
JSWolf - "(.*)"
and
DiapDealer - "[^"]+"

I only tried Becky's solution, which worked perfectly, but I assume all the above would have achieved the same result.

So I'm now even more confused. My poor septuagenarian brain is never going to cope

But thanks to everyone for their suggestions - I have noted them all for future reference.

When the id I want to get rid of is in the format of id="ch1", I use id="ch[0-9]+" That gets rid of the chapter based ids.

[DiapDealer]

For the record: my expression was in response to @theducks and @jswolf's expressions for. finding ANY content between the quotes of id="".

Use regular-expressions.info for learning.

[patrik]

I want to catch some hrefs.

This catches all:

<a href=".*?">(.*?)</a>
\1

I want to only get those that have the word "smil" somewhere within the link.
href=" smil "

I have tried many ways, but I can't seem to understand regex good enough...

[DiapDealer]

<a [^>]*href="[^"]*smil[^"]*">[^>]*</a>

That's off the cuff and with no captures, but it should be close.

And that's "smil" within the href quotes, not within the link text.

[Turtle91]

href=".*?(?<=smil).*?">(.*?)</a>

edit: dangit - ninja'd again

[DiapDealer]

Actually, I'd probably include an extra [^>]* before the > of the opening 'a' tag in case there's attributes that follow href.

<a [^>]*href="[^"]*smil[^"]*"[^>]*>[^>]*</a>

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

href=".*?(?<=smil).*?">(.*?)</a>

edit: dangit - ninja'd again

Bonus points for using a look-behind, though.

[patrik]

You guys are awesome, thanks.