Hi, I want to take the first comma seperated value from that string.
"Lines.No;StartPos=3;RightAligned;MaxLength =2"
I used "\b.*\;" regex to take "Lines.No". But the result is
"Lines.No;StartPos=3;RightAligned;"
thanks.
views:
111answers:
3
+4
A:
First, anchor the search at the start of the string. Then use a lazy quantifier: ^\b.*?; or a negated character class: ^\b[^;];
But careful: Could semicolons appear in your CSV fields (in quoted strings)? If so, regexes can still be made to work, but will be a lot more complicated - a CSV parser would be much better.
Tim Pietzcker
2010-02-24 13:43:55
thanks for your quick response. But the result is like that;Lines.No;\nStartPos=3;\nRightAligned;
mkus
2010-02-24 13:46:22
OK, you probably need to make sure that the regex engine is anchored at the beginning of the string. I have edited my answer.
Tim Pietzcker
2010-02-24 13:50:34
+2
A:
I know you are looking fore a regex, but if you have delimited string, use your favourite language's split() function, eg in Python
>>> s="Lines.No;StartPos=3;RightAligned;MaxLength =2"
>>> s.split(";")[0]
'Lines.No'
Much simpler than regex. Similarly, explode() in PHP, split() in Perl, Split() in C# , etc
ghostdog74
2010-02-24 13:45:44
+1. I think using `split` in this case makes the code a little cleaner. Even simple regular expressions make the code a little more obtuse, and I'd much rather see operations expressed in more explicit constructs if possible. Regex has its place, but not as a substitute for a simple split().
Seth Petry-Johnson
2010-02-24 13:54:27
+1
A:
You could do this way too, in python
>>> x="Lines.No;StartPos=3;RightAligned;MaxLength =2"
>>> x[:x.find(";")]
'Lines.No'
S.Mark
2010-02-24 13:51:17