I have a string of names like this "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry" I can match all but the last name with
\w+.*?;
Is there a regular expression that will match all the names, including the last one?
I think I understand what ;|$ is for, but I don't get what the ?: is doing. Could you explain?
Steven
2010-03-16 04:08:56
The `(?:...)` is a non-matching group. It won't show up via a `\<n>` backreference.
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
2010-03-16 04:11:38
Ok, thanks. Would `\w+.*?(?:[;\$])` work the same way?
Steven
2010-03-16 06:47:44
No. `$` in a range matches a literal `$`, not the end of the line.
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
2010-03-16 07:16:56
That's a **non-capturing** group, not *non-matching*. http://www.regular-expressions.info/brackets.html
Alan Moore
2010-03-16 10:15:52
+3
A:
don't have to use regex. it seems like between your names ,you have ";" as delimiter, so use that to split on the string. eg Python
>>> mystring = "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry"
>>> mystring.split(";")
['J. Smith', ' B. Jones', ' O. Henry']
ghostdog74
2010-03-16 00:25:28
+1 for keeping it simple. I think the OP wanted all three names, so just `mystring.split(';')` would suffice.
Adam Bernier
2010-03-16 02:16:58
+2
A:
This is simple enough if you want a regex:
\w[^;]+
Perl example:
@names = "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry" =~ /\w[^;]+/g;
# ("J. Smith","B. Jones","O. Henry")
Or if you want a split I'd use \s*;\s* (\s* to remove the spaces):
@names = split /\s*;\s*/, "J. Smith; B. Jones; O. Henry";
# ("J. Smith","B. Jones","O. Henry")
Qtax
2010-03-16 02:45:45