[thelist] Regex help

[Tab Alleman]

That's so simple it just might work.   : )   For now, I've put together a kludge that might work (there's a single character that seems to only come after an END in my source string), but before I go to production I may put a solution like this in place.  Thanks!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Lee Kowalkowski
> Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 6:10 AM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: Re: [thelist] Regex help
> 
> 
> On 02/05/07, Tab Alleman <talleman at lumpsum.com> wrote:
> > Except I was overly subtle in describing my string.  The 
> string begins and ends with any combination of characters 
> which could include START, so there might be more than two 
> START's in the string.  I really need to specifcally grab 
> instances of START that are followed by END before another START.
> 
> Phew, firstly I'm not sure what regEx syntax/flavour you want, but I
> don't think ^ outside of [] will work as it means the beginning of
> input.  Perhaps ! does it, (I think it does for mod_rewrite).
> 
> Your problem is one I have seen many times, and have not been able to
> solve in a single regEx.  I tend to go for a serial regEx approach,
> something like:
> 
> 1. replace all START with \nSTART and END with END\n.
> 2. do global search for START(.*)END - works because '.' means
> anything but the newline character.  Only need the brackets if you're
> backreferencing without the START and END.  A global search should
> return an array, so if you want the second instance, it will be the
> second element of the array.
> 
> Fine for searching, if doing search/replace, you'll perhaps need:
> 
> 3. replace all \nSTART with START and END\n with END.
> 
> If your source string already contains new lines and START and END can
> be on different lines, you'll need to start with a replace all \n with
> \x01 (or other character or combination of characters that you're
> confident won't be present).  And swap the new lines back in
> afterwards.
> 
> That's what I tend to do anyway...
> 
> -- 
> Lee
> -- 
> 
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