Regular Expression 1

[Swi]

I simply want a regular expression to find any instance of an @ symbol anywhere in a string.

I used /@/ but it does not seem to work. Any ideas?

Thanks.

Swi

 

[strongm]

Just @ should work

 

[Swi]

Thanks, is there any way to look for two @ signs or is it just @@

Swi

 

[strongm]

@@ should work. Or @{2}. Or @{2,2}

 

[Swi]

Ok, thanks.

Swi

 

[Swi]

strongm,

Hate to be a both but what would a way to have an expression that says if a string excludes the @ symbol?

Thanks.

Swi

 

[strongm]

Excluding? RegEx isn't that good at finding non-matches ... but the following (credit not mine) should do the trick: ^((?!@).)*$

 

[Swi]

You are the man!!!

Thanks.

Swi

 

[tedsmith]

What about instr?
strTestCharacter="@" (or "@@" if looking for 2)
if Instr(strExpression,strTestCharacter) > 0 then
' Found
else
' Not Found
end if

If there are multiple instances of the strTextCharacter then you use a do - loop
Counter=1
Do until Counter= 0

​

Counter=Instr(Counter,strExpression,strTestCharacter)

​

CounterString=CounterString & str(counter) &"'"
Loop

ounterstring will look like "10, 22, 56" if indicating 3 occurrences

 

[strongm]

Sure, in a simple scenario instr is probably a preferable solution (simpler, faster, lightweight, builtin).

However Regular Expressions are a very powerful tool that allow us to do a LOT more than simply finding the position of a character. Given Swi's very specific request for a regexp solution I suspect that simply looking for @ is not the ultimate goal, even if that goal is as simple as learning about regexps (as I rather suspect that they are familiar with Instr and would already be using it if it were appropriate)

 

[tedsmith]

Is regexp any faster or slower than using instr.
I'm talking about say finding every occurrence of a 3 digit number (Eg. 385) in a 10k text string (CSV version of an Excel spreadsheet).
Alternatively how would this compare timewise with updating a database table from the data and using a SQL query?

 

[Swi]

The only reason I want to use a regular expression in this case is because I am locked down in an application that I can only enter a regular expression into.

Does anyone know if there is a way to have a regular expression evaluate only if there is text to evaluate?

Meaning, the application I am using this in is causing an error because no text has been entered.

So in other words, in the regular expression can I conditionally evaluate based on whether or text has been entered?

I have the following regular expression for a phone#.

^\({1}[2-9]\d{2}\){1}\s?\d{3}\-\d{4}

I would like to add something to where an empty string is acceptable as input.

Thanks.

Swi

 

[Swi]

Looks like I got it worked out. Thanks anyway.

^$|^\({1}[2-9]\d{2}\){1}\s?\d{3}\-\d{4}

Swi

 

[strongm]

You only gave us 9 minutes ... ;-)

 

[Swi]

Swi