How to match regex avoid parentheses inside parentheses - c#

I have string expression like this
CONTAIN("A(ASDFASDF)","MAKLOON") && !CONTAIN("THIS IS THE (STRING) ","MAKLON") && !CONTAIN("ASDFASDF","MAKLUN") && ("121"=="" || 121.00=="" || 121.0=="")
I want to match only the result like this :
1. CONTAIN("A(ASDFASDF)","MAKLOON")
2. CONTAIN("THIS IS THE (STRING) ","MAKLON")
3. CONTAIN("ASDFASDF","MAKLUN")
I have try with this regex but the match only this :
CONTAIN\(.*?\)
Result
1. CONTAIN("A(ASDFASDF)
2. CONTAIN("THIS IS THE (STRING)
3. CONTAIN("ASDFASDF","MAKLUN")
How to solve my problem? Thanks

Here's a slightly enhanced version, which allows the inner string to have parenthesis. It's not perfect either, but probably a bit more secure:
CONTAIN\(".*?", ?".*?"\)
Brief explanation: It matches CONTAIN(, then any character until it finds "," or ", " (optional space, remove ? if you will never have a space there), then again any character until the final "). The ? after the * is necessary to make it match as little as possible. Otherwise, .* would match as much as possible, from the first to the last CONTAIN string.
Besides matching what you mention in your post, it will also match:
CONTAIN("HEL()LO",")WORLD(")
CONTAIN(")HELLO(",")WORLD(")
And will not match an invalid strings like these, which are matched by the other proposed solutions:
CONTAIN("HELLO",")WORLD() // partial match
CONTAIN(")
CONTAIN(""")
I tried to do some more complex regex to match the number of quotes or parenthesis, but I think you don't need such complexity, unless your string may have escaped quotes, like \" or "".
If you won't get any of those invalid strings or strange strings, you may be good enough with the other simpler regex.

You could try this pattern: CONTAIN\(.*?"\)

I think the regular expression you're looking for would be: (CONTAIN\(\".+\"\)). By including the \" you get all of the characters inside the quotes instead of ending at the first instance of a ')'.

Related

Regular expression in RegularExpressionAttribute behavior

I am using this regular expression: #"[ \]\[;\/\\\?:*""<>|+=]|^[.]|[.]$"
First part [ \]\[;\/\\\?:*""<>|+=] should match any of the characters inside the brackets.
Next part ^[.] should match if the string starts with a 'dot'
Last part [.]$ should match if the string ends with a 'dot'
This works perfectly fine if I use Regex.IsMatch() function. However if I use RegularExpressionAttribute in ASP.NET MVC, I always get invalid model. Does anyone have any clue why this behavior occurs?
Examples:
"abcdefg" should not match
".abcdefg" should match
"abc.defg" should not match
"abcdefg." should match
"abc[defg" should match
Thanks in advance!
EDIT:
The RegularExpressionAttribute Specifies that a data field value in ASP.NET Dynamic Data must match the specified regular expression..
Which means. I need the "abcdef" to match, and ".abcdefg" to not match. Basically negate the whole expression I have above.
You need to make sure the pattern matches the entire string.
In a general case, you may append/prepend the pattern with .*.
Here, you may use
.*[ \][;/\\?:*"<>|+=].*|^[.].*|.*[.]$
Or, to make it a bit more efficient (that is, to reduce backtracking in the first branch) a negated character class will perform better:
[^ \][;/\\?:*"<>|+=]*[ \][;\/\\?:*"<>|+=].*|^[.].*|.*[.]$
But it is best to put the branches matching text at the start/end of the string as first branches:
^[.].*|.*[.]$|[^ \][;/\\?:*"<>|+=]*[ \][;/\\?:*"<>|+=].*
NOTE: You do not have to escape / and ? chars inside the .NET regex since you can't use regex delimiters there.
C# declaration of the last pattern will look like
#"^[.].*|.*[.]$|[^ \][;/\\?:*""<>|+=]*[ \][;/\\?:*""<>|+=].*"
See this .NET regex demo.
RegularExpressionAttrubute:
[RegularExpression(
#"^[.].*|.*[.]$|[^ \][;/\\?:*""<>|+=]*[ \][;/\\?:*""<>|+=].*",
ErrorMessage = "Username cannot contain following characters: ] [ ; / \\ ? : * \" < > | + =")
]
Your regex is an alternation which matches 1 character out of 3 character classes, the first consisting of more than 1 characters, the second a dot at the start of the string and the third a dot at the end of the string.
It works fine because it does match one of the alternations, only not the whole string you want to match.
You could use 3 alternations where the first matches a dot followed by repeating the character class until the end of the string, the second the other way around but this time the dot is at the end of the string.
Or the third using a positive lookahead asserting that the string contains at least one of the characters [\][;\/\\?:*"<>|+=]
^\.[a-z \][;\/\\?:*"<>|+=]+$|^[a-z \][;\/\\?:*"<>|+=]+\.$|^(?=.*[\][;\/\\?:*"<>|+=])[a-z \][;\/\\?:*"<>|+=]+$
Regex demo

C# Regular Expression for String matching

I am looking for a regular expression that returns success only if the input string contains following characters:
a-zA-Z0-9~!#$^ ()_-+’:.?
Is this regular expression correct?
^[a-zA-Z0-9~!#$^ ()_-+’:.?]+$
I have understood what ^ means here but not sure about +$. Also are there any alternatives to this? By the way the above regular expression also includes a space character between ^ and (
it only contains the characters listed above
bool invalidCharsExist =
Regex.Replace(input, #"[a-zA-Z0-9~!#\$\^\ \(\)_\-\+’:\.\?]", "").Length != 0;
BTW: This is not fully equivalent to your regex (It will also include non-ascii letters and digits) but I think it is a better way to check
var specialChars = new HashSet<char>("~!#$^ ()_-+’:.?");
var allValid = input.All(c => char.IsLetterOrDigit(c) || specialChars.Contains(c));
Close, but get rid of that dash in the middle of your character class and put it at the beginning:
^[-a-zA-Z0-9~!#$^ ()_+’:.?]+$
And make sure when you put it in a string that you use the proper string qualifier (I forget what it's called):
#"^[-a-zA-Z0-9~!#$^ ()_+’:.?]+$"
As to whether or not you can do it in other ways, sure, for example a negative look-ahead that doesn't actually match anything. I don't think a proper regex optimizer would leave one better than the other, it's just a matter of preference. Do you want something that looks to succeed (selects the entire string if valid), or something that looks to fail (negative look-ahead).
Honestly if performance is at all important, you should write a good old for and loop over the characters (or the equivalent LINQ implementation). Regex won't even be in the ballpark.
the regular expression would be: ^[a-zA-Z0-9~!#$^ ()_\-+’:.?]+$
I personally recommend using https://regex101.com to check regex expressions - note that they don't have C# support, but in general javascript's RegExp has similar syntax to C#, but what it does give you a particularly useful explaination of what your expression is doing, here is this epression's explaination from there:
^ assert position at start of the string
[a-zA-Z0-9~!#$^ ()_\-\+’:.?]+ match a single character present in the list below
Quantifier: + Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed [greedy]
a-z a single character in the range between a and z (case sensitive)
A-Z a single character in the range between A and Z (case sensitive)
0-9 a single character in the range between 0 and 9
~!#$^ ()_ a single character in the list ~!#$^ ()_ literally
\- matches the character - literally
+’:.? a single character in the list ’:.? literally
$ assert position at end of the string
the issue with what you put in the OP was literally only forgetting to escape the - as it is reserved in the regular expression pattern to be used for special purposes (i.e in the [] notation the - is reserved to declare a character range like a-z)

How can i make my regular expression work?

I am new to both .NET (C#) and regular expressions.
I need a regular expression to match against a url:
If url string contains "/id/Whatever_COMES_HERE_EVERY_CHAR_ACCEPTED/" : return true
If url string contains only "/id/" : return false
I have tried the following but it only returns true if url is http:// localhost/id/
This is my script:
string thisUrl = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsolutePath;
Match match = Regex.Match(thisUrl, #"/id/*$");
What am i doing wrong?
You have this:
/id/*$
What this is doing is matching the literal string /id/ and then you have the quantifier * which means 0 or more times. Then you have $ which means end of the string.
You are looking for repetition of the literal / which is not what you want. (So this: http:// localhost/id/////////////////// should have matched too with your original regex)
What you need is something like this:
/id/.+$
This will match the literal /id/ followed by the . which in regex means any character which is quantified with the + which means 1 or more.
You could tighten it up and use \S instead of . which means non-whitespace characters (since a URL shouldn't have whitespace)
Also note: there are a variety of online regex tools which are really useful when trying to figure out and test a regex. A couple of examples:
http://rubular.com/
http://regex101.com/
http://www.regxlib.com/
And even extension for visual studio you can use:
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bf883ae3-188b-43bc-bd29-6235c4195d1f
When you use the start it signals that 0 or more of the preceding char shall be present. You will want to use
"/id/.+" to signal that at least one more char must come after the /
If you're just looking for true/false solution, you should use IsMatch() function. The other issue is that * (zero or more) and + (one or more) are quantifiers and must be preceeded by a character class or group. Dot (.) is a character class that represents ANY character. So the correct solution for your problem would be:
Regex.IsMatch(thisUrl, #"/id/.+$");
Considering that the input is a URL, this regex can be improved upon by restricting character classes to valid URL characters only, but for your purpose the above should be sufficient.

C# regex match behaviour

I've got this line in my code:
Match match = Regex.Match(actualValue, regexValue, RegexOptions.None);
I've got a simple question. why when checking for success meaning with the line:
if(match.Success)
then the match does succeed with the following values:
actualValue = "G:1"
regexValue = "A*"
the actual does not seem to fit at least for me so i probably miss something...
what i do want to achieve is just receiving an actual value and a regular expression and check if the actual value fits the regular expression.. i thought that's what i did there but apparently i didn't.
EDIT: another question. is there a way to treat the * as the "any char" wildcard? meaning is it possible that A* will be considered as A and after it any char is possible?
Your code itself is correct; your regular expression isn't.
Based on your comments on other answers, you're after a regular expression which matches any string which starts with A, and you're assuming that '*' means "any characters". '*' in fact means "match the preceding character zero or more times", so the regular expression you've given means "match the start of the string followed by zero or more 'A' characters", which will match absolutely anything.
If you're looking for a regular expression that matches the whole string but only if it starts with 'A', the regular expression you're after is ^A.*. The '.' character in a regular expression means "match any character". This regular expression thus means "match the start of the string, followed by an 'A', followed by zero or more other characters" and will thus match the entire string provided it starts with 'A'.
However, you already have the whole string, so this is a little unnecessary - all you really want to do is get an answer to the question "does the string start with an 'A'?". A regular expression that will achieve this is simply '^A'. If it matches, the string started with an 'A'.
Of course, it should be pointed out that you don't need a regular expression to confirm this anyway. If this is genuinely all you want to do (and it's possible you've just put together a simple example, and your real scenario is more complicated), why not just use the StartsWith method?:
bool match = actualValue.StartsWith("A");
The regex matches because A* means "look for 0 or more occurrences of 'A'". It will match any string.
If you meant to look for an arbitrary number of 'A', but at least one, try A+ instead.
Looking at the comments it looks like you're trying to match a lot of strings starting with A.
If they're separated by white space you could find all of them using the following:
bool matched = Regex.IsMatch(actualValue, #"\bA\w+");
This matches : "Atest flkjs Apple Ascii cAse".
If there is only one string you're matching and it starts with A and has no spaces:
bool matched = Regex.IsMatch(actualValue, #"^A\w+$");
This matches "Apple", but not "Apple and orange" as the second string has spaces.
As Chris noted * is not a wildcard in the way you meant with regex searches. You can find some information to get you started with regexes at regex-info.
Regex take the regular expression in the constructor.
Exampel in your case could be :
if(new Regex("A*").IsMatch(actualValue)
//Do something
If you are unsecure of the regexpattern, try it out here

How to check if a string starts and ends with specific strings?

I have a string like:
string str = "https://abce/MyTest";
I want to check if the particular string starts with https:// and ends with /MyTest.
How can I acheive that?
This regular expression:
^https://.*/MyTest$
will do what you ask.
^ matches the beginning of the string.
https:// will match exactly that.
.* will match any number of characters (the * part) of any kind (the . part). If you want to make sure there is at least one character in the middle, use .+ instead.
/MyTest matches exactly that.
$ matches the end of the string.
To verify the match, use:
Regex.IsMatch(str, #"^https://.*/MyTest$");
More info at the MSDN Regex page.
Try the following:
var str = "https://abce/MyTest";
var match = Regex.IsMatch(str, "^https://.+/MyTest$");
The ^ identifier matches the start of the string, while the $ identifier matches the end of the string. The .+ bit simply means any sequence of chars (except a null sequence).
You need to import the System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace for this, of course.
I want to check if the particular string starts with "https://" and ends with "/MyTest".
Well, you could use regex for that. But it's clearer (and probably quicker) to just say what you mean:
str.StartsWith("https://") && str.EndsWith("/MyTest")
You then don't have to worry about whether any of the characters in your match strings need escaping in regex. (For this example, they don't.)
In .NET:
^https://.*/MyTest$
Try Expresso, good for building .NET regexes and teaching you the syntax at the same time.
HAndy tool for genrating regular expressions
http://txt2re.com/

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