need some pattern help

Question

4.00/5 (1 vote)

See more:

I have some strings like this:

Mr. [[husband name]] is married to Mrs. [[wife name]] and they have [[num kids]] kids

I need a pattern that will pull out the text that's both in the brackets and the text that's not in the brackets so my end result is like this:

"Mr. "
"[[husband name]]"
" is married to Mrs. "
"[[wife name]]"
" and they have "
"[[num kids]]"
" kids"

The pattern below grabs the stuff in the brackets just fine (bracketed text will always only be letters, spaces and numbers) but I haven't been able to come up with the OR part that gets the text that's not in the brackets (this text can be made up of any characters).

\[\[[a-zA-Z0-9\s]*\]\]

I think after I get the pattern right I should be able to use that pattern to read the individual broken down strings into an array that I can loop through so I can build the finished string by replacing the bracketed text with some field values. I'm not entirely sure how to get the pattern matches into the array. I tried a few things that didn't seem to work but I think it was mostly because my pattern was wrong. Any help on that would be appreciated as well.

Thanks,

Avian.

Additionally the string being tested may or may not have unbracketed text at the beginning or the end of the string. It could look like this:

[[husband name]] is married to Mrs. [[wife name]] and the number of kids they have is [[num kids]]

Seems like I should just be able to do this:

\[\[[a-zA-Z0-9\s]*\]\] OR NOT \[\[[a-zA-Z0-9\s]*\]\]

but I don't know how to make that a correct regex pattern

This kind of works:

(\[\[[a-zA-Z0-9\s]*\]\])|([^(\[\[)])*

but if there are any [ in the spaces that are not between [[ and ]] then they are excluded.

Just some background: The end user can select from a list of field codes that look like [[husband name]] or [[num kids]] and so on. These are fixed items that can be chosen and dropped into grid cells. The interstitial cells (so to speak) can be any text the user chooses to enter. I of course prevent an end user from entering [[ AND ]] into a user defined cell but I don't want to prevent single "[" or "]" or even double "[[" OR double "]]". Since the field codes are absolutely limited to [a-zA-Z0-9\s] by me, and I can prevent [[ ]] from being entered by the end user, there will always be a distinction between the field codes and the end user entered data. If I have to prevent either [[ or ]] from being entered, I'll do that but I'd rather not limit it.

Posted 1-Apr-11 1:37am

avianrand

Updated 1-Apr-11 3:10am

v3

Add a Solution

Comments

Wayne Gaylard 1-Apr-11 8:16am

Is it necessary to do it with Regular Expressions. Seems to me it would be easier to do by splitting the string. Just a thought.

avianrand 1-Apr-11 8:24am

Could you explain with an example of what you would do?

2 solutions

Solution 3

Well I think I figured it out. I made my own little vb.net regex tester and this string:

"[[husband name]] is married to{}*[]]]]^234/*-*-+ Mrs. [[wife name]] and they have [[num kids]] kidsx "

with this pattern:

(\[\[[a-zA-Z0-9\s]*\]\])

renders these results:

""
"[[husband name]]"
" is married to{}*[]]]]^234/*-*-+ Mrs. "
"[[wife name]]"
" and they have "
"[[num kids]]"
" kidsx "

It works no matter what I enter for the string so I think I'm set. All I needed to add to my original pattern was the open and close parens. If anyone can tell me why this might not be the solution, let me know.

Posted 1-Apr-11 3:46am

avianrand

Comments

Manfred Rudolf Bihy 1-Apr-11 9:52am

The pattern you are showing will never match anything that does not start with [[ so I either you have not replicated the exact pattern you were using or you are not showing the correct results. Take your pick.

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Manfred Rudolf Bihy · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-01T02:03:00

Solution 1

Allow for optional text that does not have brackets in it

String yourExampleString = "Place the string you want to parse here";
String regexString = @"([^\[])*(\[\[[a-zA-Z0-9\s]*\]\])?";
Regex regex = new Regex(regexString);
Matches matches = regex.Match(yourExampleString);
foreach(Match match in matches)
{
    //Process the separate matches here
    //By accessing the Groups collection of the current match
    //you can get at the capture groups that were made by the parenthesis
    //in the regular expression
}

Now you have two capture groups: optional leading text without brackets and optional text in brackets. When your match succeeds all you have to do is inspect the content of the first group for leading text and the second group for the bracketed content. You do this for all matches and you're done.

That should do it!

Cheers,

Posted 1-Apr-11 2:03am

Manfred Rudolf Bihy

Updated 1-Apr-11 3:57am

v4

Comments

avianrand 1-Apr-11 8:25am

Thanks but that didn't work. Here's what I did:

Dim sTestString As String = "Mr. [[husband name]] is married to Mrs. [[wife name]] and they have [[num kids]] kids"
Dim sTestPattern As String = "([^\[]*(\[\[[a-zA-Z0-9\s]*\]\])?[^\[]*)*"
Dim sTestResult() As String = Regex.Split(sTestString, sTestPattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

Which returned this:

(0) = ""
(1) = ""
(2) = "[[num kids]]"
(3) = ""
(4) = ""
(5) = ""

Additionally the string being tested may or may not have unbracketed text at the beginning or the end of the string. It could look like this:

[[husband name]] is married to Mrs. [[wife name]] and the number of kids they have is [[num kids]]

Manfred Rudolf Bihy 1-Apr-11 9:53am

Use the pattern I told you to use and don't to Regex.Split use the method Match. I'll expand on my example.

Sandeep Mewara 1-Apr-11 10:05am

My 5!

lorenkins 1-Apr-11 11:27am

Looks like a misplaced paren in your example? I think that pattern should begin with "([^\[]*)" instead of "([^\[])*"