Regular expression problem

Question

Hi, How can I search a whole string for a specific match. It'll contain both characters with int or decimal numbers eg A12B32.25C-456D-75.E75 I'll know that this will start with A and ends with E I think I can use "^" and "$" right? but i'm bit lost in other parts to check for character and int or decimal. I'll be glad if you can give the regex and explain it a bit :).

PS. D-75. is not mistyped...

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

As a free-spacing regex, hoping I'm guessing correctly what you meant:

^                   # start of line
A(-?\d+\.?\d*)      # match "A", followed by a number with optional sign and decimal part
B(-?\d+\.?\d*)      # same with "B"
C(-?\d+\.?\d*)      # etc.
D(-?\d+\.?\d*)
E(-?\d+\.?\d*)
$                   # end of line

This will capture the numbers into backreferences 1-5. If you tell us how you're planning to use the regex, I can refine my answer.

Answer 2

You are doing literal pattern matching? - you have noticed that you embedded regex metacharacters like a period == . in your pattern.

Depending on what regex engine you are using there may be a 'pattern-only' option. For example

grep -F 'mypattern'  myfile

prevents the regex engine from seeing metacharacters in a pattern.

What environment/regex are you using?