Hi Paul.
Just a few notes.
The “^” I believe is an anchor tag to the beginning of the line, so having a
bunch of these probably caused some of your problems.
Here’s a regex that I came up with.
I used the “?” qualifier to make the regex non-greedy – which probably would
have been the next thing that you ran into.
paul=~/\".*?\"\t\".*?\"\t\".*?\"\t\"(.*?)\"\t\"(.*?)\"/
I tested this real quick (below) and it looks to work
irb(main):015:0> paul=File.open("C:/temp/paul.txt")
=> #<File:C:/temp/paul.txt>
irb(main):016:0> pop=paul.gets
=> "\"one\"\t\"1\"\t\" 0.1234\"\t\"0\"\t\"4\"\n"
irb(main):017:0> pop=~/\".*?\"\t\".*?\"\t\".*?\"\t\"(.*?)\"\t\"(.*?)\"/
=> 0
irb(main):018:0> $1
=> "0"
irb(main):019:0> $2
=> "4"
As an aside, what’s wrong with reading the line, then splitting it into an
array?
I think that would have been much more readable than using the regex soln.
Regards
-Alan
_____
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Carvalho
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 9:30 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Wtr-general] OT: Regular Expression help
Hi there. After several hours of looking at this problem, I've decided to ask
for some help.
Here's the problem: I have an input text file that has a series of values
stored like this:
"one" "1" " 0.1234" "0" "4"
"two" "3" "1.3333" "1" "0"
...
I want the values in the 4th and 5th quotes on each line. I originally thought
about dumping each line 'split' into an array and working with the array, but
then I thought it might save me time if I could just figure out the regular
expression to get the right values.
I've read through an online Regular Expression tutorial, reviewed a few books,
and downloaded two apps (PowerGREP and Regexile) to help me try and figure this
out but so far no luck.
Here's the line I started with:
line =~ /^\"[^"]*"\t\"[^"]*"\t\"[^"]*"\t\"([^"]*)"\t\"([^"]*)"\t/
=> Expect $1 and $2 to hold the values I want... the (bracketed) regex's
- I tried switching the \t with \s but no luck
- tried adding and removing extra backslashes around the quotes, but nothing
- tried adding and removing all sorts of other characters but still can't get
it to work.
Can anyone help me figure out how to parse these input lines in a quick and
efficient way? I wanted to avoid having to rely on arrays, but I'm ready to
give up and use them right about now.
Please let me know. Thanks in advance. Paul C.
(P.S. the *actual* input file has something like 20 values on each line. If I
can figure out the pattern above for the simplified input file, I'm sure I can
apply it to the larger real input file.)
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