On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 7:30 PM Chip Scheide via 4D_Tech < 4d_tech@lists.4d.com> wrote:
> Thanks Kirk, > > According to Wiki : > . - matches any single character > ( ) - defines a marked subexpression > * - matches the preceding element zero or more times > so... as I read the definitions... > "(.*:)" > > match any character(s), before a ":" > a file path (on a Mac) is <folder> : <folder> : <folder> ... : <file> > > Match Regex says: > "...If you pass arrays, the command returns the position and length of > the occurrence in the element zero of the arrays and the positions and > lengths of the groups captured by the regular expression in the > following elements." > > so I would expect(ed) > Match regex($folderPathMotif;$File_Path;1;$path_pos;$path_len) > > to populate the arrays with each occurrence of ":", as your supplied > code appears to do, > OR > if the Match Regex does not find/report all occurrences of ":" to > report the FIRST instance of a ":", not the last. > Regex behaves like that because, by default, its matching is greedy, what means it tries to match the pattern to as many characters as possible. In your case, it tries to find longest run that match pattern .*; - and the run consist of all characters up to last :. If you want the match stop on first occurrence of : you need to make operator * ungreedy by attaching ? to it. If you try pattern (.*?:) it should return substring up to first :. While pattern .*: says "find the longest run of characters ending with :" pattern .*?: means "find the shortest run of characters ending with : Size of array is number of matching groups, in your case 1. This is how it works, IMHO. If the whole pattern repeats itself several times, you need to run Match regex in loop. HTH, -- Peter Bozek ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: https://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:4d_tech-unsubscr...@lists.4d.com **********************************************************************
