[thelist] Regex remove repeats
Jason Handby
jasonh at corestar.co.uk
Wed Jan 26 06:41:28 CST 2005
> Hi all
>
> I've got a large amount of repeating data that I need to
> strip down so that there's only one instance of each name.
> For example, I've got:
>
> ac/dc,ac/dc,ac/dc,ac/dc,david bowie,david bowie,dixie
> chicks,dixie chicks,black sabbath,zz top,zz top,zz top,zz top
>
> I'm stuck on writing a regex that is going to lok ahead to
> see if the next item in the comma separated list is the same
> as the last and, if it is, to remove it.
>
> Any help greatly appreciated.
How's this?
s/([^,]*,)(?:\1+)/\1/g
It requires that your string of data has a comma on the end -- hope that's
not a problem.
It works in the Regex Coach ( http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/ ), and should
also work in ASP.NET, but I haven't tested it in PHP.
Jason
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