Replacing a comma with Regex in C# - c#

I encountered a problem with quite simple thing I guess, I want to replace each comma ',' in a string except for the ones that are surrounded by digits.
Examples:
hey, world -> hey,\nworld
hey , world -> hey,\nworld
they are simple, but now also:
hey,world -> hey,\nworld
hey),world -> hey),\nworld
(1,2) -> (1,2) << no change :P
I tried it with different Regexes and I can't really get it working as easily as I'd like to. Matching the commas that I need is quite easy but the problem is that I thought I can do it this way:
Regex.Replace(input, #"[^\d]\s*,\s*[^\d]", ",\n");
it works cool but it changes my:
hey,world into: he,\norld
I'd be glad if you could help me figure that out :)
Regards,
Andrew

This uses negative lookbehind (?<!...) and negative lookahead (?!...) to check for the presence of digits.
(?<![0-9])\s*,\s*|\s*,\s*(?![0-9])
It means: not preceded by digits OR not followed by digits. So the only failure case is: preceded by digits AND followed by digits.
Be aware that \d is different than [0-9]. ԱԲԳԴԵԶԷԸԹ0123456789 are \d (and many others) (they are Armenian numerals), while 0123456789 are [0-9]
My original regex was TOTALLY WRONG! Because it was: not-preceded by digits AND not-followed by digits, while the request was: non-preceded by digits OR not followed by digits.

You need to use lookaheads to only match the comma, not the characters before and after the comma:
(?=[^\d]\s*),(?=\s*[^\d])
Adding the removal of spaces shown in the second example:
(?=[^\d]\s*)[ ]*,[ ]*(?=\s*[^\d])

Your match contains the characters you don't want to replace, you should use the negative lookahead assertion and the negative lookbehind assertion.
Here's a good site for regex.
#"(?<!\d)\s*,\s*(?!\d)"
The above regex will replace the comma and any spaces directly before or after it.

Try to replace with an empty string.
Regex.Replace(input, #"(?![0-9])\s*,\s*(?![0-9])", "");

Related

Regex IsMatch aways returns false [duplicate]

I have a regex
/^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$/
this just allows only alphanumerics but also if I insert only number(s) or only character(s) then also it accepts it. I want it to work like the field should accept only alphanumeric values but the value must contain at least both 1 character and 1 number.
Why not first apply the whole test, and then add individual tests for characters and numbers? Anyway, if you want to do it all in one regexp, use positive lookahead:
/^(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[a-zA-Z])([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$/
This RE will do:
/^(?:[0-9]+[a-z]|[a-z]+[0-9])[a-z0-9]*$/i
Explanation of RE:
Match either of the following:
At least one number, then one letter or
At least one letter, then one number plus
Any remaining numbers and letters
(?:...) creates an unreferenced group
/i is the ignore-case flag, so that a-z == a-zA-Z.
I can see that other responders have given you a complete solution. Problem with regexes is that they can be difficult to maintain/understand.
An easier solution would be to retain your existing regex, then create two new regexes to test for your "at least one alphabetic" and "at least one numeric".
So, test for this :-
/^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$/
Then this :-
/\d/
Then this :-
/[A-Z]/i
If your string passes all three regexes, you have the answer you need.
The accepted answers is not worked as it is not allow to enter special characters.
Its worked perfect for me.
^(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[a-zA-Z])(?=\S+$).{6,20}$
one digit must
one character must (lower or upper)
every other things optional
Thank you.
While the accepted answer is correct, I find this regex a lot easier to read:
REGEX = "([A-Za-z]+[0-9]|[0-9]+[A-Za-z])[A-Za-z0-9]*"
This solution accepts at least 1 number and at least 1 character:
[^\w\d]*(([0-9]+.*[A-Za-z]+.*)|[A-Za-z]+.*([0-9]+.*))
And an idea with a negative check.
/^(?!\d*$|[a-z]*$)[a-z\d]+$/i
^(?! at start look ahead if string does not
\d*$ contain only digits | or
[a-z]*$ contain only letters
[a-z\d]+$ matches one or more letters or digits until $ end.
Have a look at this regex101 demo
(the i flag turns on caseless matching: a-z matches a-zA-Z)
Maybe a bit late, but this is my RE:
/^(\w*(\d+[a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z]+\d)\w*)+$/
Explanation:
\w* -> 0 or more alphanumeric digits, at the beginning
\d+[a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z]+\d -> a digit + a letter OR a letter + a digit
\w* -> 0 or more alphanumeric digits, again
I hope it was understandable
What about simply:
/[0-9][a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z][0-9]/
Worked like a charm for me...
Edit following comments:
Well, some shortsighting of my own late at night: apologies for the inconvenience...
The - incomplete - underlying idea was that only one "transition" from a digit to an alpha or from an alpha to a digit was needed somewhere to answer the question.
But next regex should do the job for a string only comprised of alphanumeric characters:
/^[0-9a-zA-Z]*([0-9][a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z][0-9])[0-9a-zA-Z]*$/
which in Javascript can be furthermore simplified as:
/^[0-9a-z]*([0-9][a-z]|[a-z][0-9])[0-9a-z]*$/i
In IMHO it's more straigthforward to read and understand than some other answers (no backtraking and the like).
Hope this helps.
If you need the digit to be at the end of any word, this worked for me:
/\b([a-zA-Z]+[0-9]+)\b/g
\b word boundary
[a-zA-Z] any letter
[0-9] any number
"+" unlimited search (show all results)

Regex for alpha number string in c# accepting underscore and white spaces

I already gone through many post on SO. I didn't find what I needed for my specific scenario.
I need a regex for alpha numeric string.
where following conditions should be matched
Valid string:
ameya123 (alphabets and numbers)
ameya (only alphabets)
AMeya12(Capital and normal alphabets and numbers)
Ameya_123 (alphabets and underscore and numbers)
Ameya_ 123 (alphabets underscore and white speces)
Invalid string:
123 (only numbers)
_ (only underscore)
(only space) (only white spaces)
any special charecter other than underscore
what i tried till now:
(?=.*[a-zA-Z])(?=.*[0-9]*[\s]*[_]*)
the above regex is working in Regex online editor however not working in data annotation in c#
please suggest.
Based on your requirements and not your attempt, what you are in need of is this:
^(?!(?:\d+|_+| +)$)[\w ]+$
The negative lookahead looks for undesired matches to fail the whole process. Those are strings containing digits only, underscores only or spaces only. If they never happen we want to have a match for ^[\w ]+$ which is nearly the same as ^[a-zA-Z0-9_ ]+$.
See live demo here
Explanation:
^ Start of line / string
(?! Start of negative lookahead
(?: Start of non-capturing group
\d+ Match digits
| Or
_+ Match underscores
| Or
[ ]+ Match spaces
)$ End of non-capturing group immediately followed by end of line / string (none of previous matches should be found)
) End of negative lookahead
[\w ]+$ Match a character inside the character set up to end of input string
Note: \w is a shorthand for [a-zA-Z0-9_] unless u modifier is set.
One problem with your regex is that in annotations, the regex must match and consume the entire string input, while your pattern only contains lookarounds that do not consume any text.
You may use
^(?!\d+$)(?![_\s]+$)[A-Za-z0-9\s_]+$
See the regex demo. Note that \w (when used for a server-side validation, and thus parsed with the .NET regex engine) will also allow any Unicode letters, digits and some more stuff when validating on the server side, so I'd rather stick to [A-Za-z0-9_] to be consistent with both server- and client-side validation.
Details
^ - start of string (not necessary here, but good to have when debugging)
(?!\d+$) - a negative lookahead that fails the match if the whole string consists of digits
(?![_\s]+$) - a negative lookahead that fails the match if the whole string consists of underscores and/or whitespaces. NOTE: if you plan to only disallow ____ or " " like inputs, you need to split this lookahead into (?!_+$) and (?!\s+$))
[A-Za-z0-9\s_]+ - 1+ ASCII letters, digits, _ and whitespace chars
$ - end of string (not necessary here, but still good to have).
If I understand your requirements correctly, you need to match one or more letters (uppercase or lowercase), and possibly zero or more of digits, whitespace, or underscore. This implies the following pattern:
^[A-Za-z0-9\s_]*[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9\s_]*$
Demo
In the demo, I have replaced \s with \t \r, because \s was matching across all lines.
Unlike the answers given by #revo and #wiktor, I don't have a fancy looking explanation to the regex. I am beautiful even without my makeup on. Honestly, if you don't understand the pattern I gave, you might want to review a good regex tutorial.
This simple RegEx should do it:
[a-zA-Z]+[0-9_ ]*
One or more Alphabet, followed by zero or more numbers, underscore and Space.
This one should be good:
[\w\s_]*[a-zA-Z]+[\w\s_]*

Regex - Replace specific zeros in a string before a period

sorry for such a direct question but i've spent a little too long trying to find a suitable RegEx that can alter the following strings:
01.10
10.01
setting them as:
1.10
10.1
So basically always remove the first '0' in the complete sequence before each period, or in the last sequence.
Is this possible with RegEx as currently it doesn't seem so?
Try this:
find: (^|\.)0+
replace: $1
See here a demo
Note: if the expression is not at the beginning of the string, you should not use ^, but the word boundary \b, like this:
(\b|\.)0+
eventually, double escape it:
(\\b|\.)0+
See other demo
Perhaps you could try it using this regex. This will not match the zero in 0.0 or 0.1 but only when there are digits after the leading zero(s).
\b0+(?=\d\.\d+\b)|(?<=\b\d+\.)0+(?=\d+\b)
\b word boundary
0+(?=\d\.\d+\b) match a zero and use a positive lookahead to assert that the zero is followed by a digit, dot, one or more digits and a word boundary
| Or
(?<=\b\d+\.)0+(?=\d+\b) Positive lookbehind that asserts that what is on the left is a wordboundary, one or more digits and a dot. Then match one or more zeroes and assert that what follows id one or more digits and a wordboundary.

Regex pattern in C# with empty space

I am having issue with a reg ex expression and can't find the answer to my question.
I am trying to build a reg ex pattern that will pull in any matches that have # around them. for example #match# or #mt# would both come back.
This works fine for that. #.*?#
However I don't want matches on ## to show up. Basically if there is nothing between the pound signs don't match.
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks.
Please use + to match 1 or more symbols:
#+.+#+
UPDATE:
If you want to only match substrings that are enclosed with single hash symbols, use:
(?<!#)#(?!#)[^#]+#(?!#)
See regex demo
Explanation:
(?<!#)#(?!#) - a # symbol that is not preceded with a # (due to the negative lookbehind (?<!#)) and not followed by a # (due to the negative lookahead (?!#))
[^#]+ - one or more symbols other than # (due to the negated character class [^#])
#(?!#) - a # symbol not followed with another # symbol.
Instead of using * to match between zero and unlimited characters, replace it with +, which will only match if there is at least one character between the #'s. The edited regex should look like this: #.+?#. Hope this helps!
Edit
Sorry for the incorrect regex, I had not expected multiple hash signs. This should work for your sentence: #+.+?#+
Edit 2
I am pretty sure I got it. Try this: (?<!#)#[^#].*?#. It might not work as expected with triple hashes though.
Try:
[^#]?#.+#[^#]?
The [^ character_group] construction matches any single character not included in the character group. Using the ? after it will let you match at the beginning/end of a string (since it matches the preceeding character zero or more times. Check out the documentation here

C# Regex match on special characters

I know this stuff has been talked about a lot, but I'm having a problem trying to match the following...
Example input: "test test 310-315"
I need a regex expression that recognizes a number followed by a dash, and returns 310. How do I include the dash in the regex expression though. So the final match result would be: "310".
Thanks a lot - kcross
EDIT: Also, how would I do the same thing but with the dash preceding, but also take into account that the number following the dash could be a negative number... didnt think of this one when I wrote the question immediately. for example: "test test 310--315" returns -315 and "test 310-315" returns 315.
Regex regex = new Regex(#"\d+(?=\-)");
\d+ - Looks for one or more digits
(?=\-) - Makes sure it is followed by a dash
The # just eliminates the need to escape the backslashes to keep the compiler happy.
Also, you may want this instead:
\d+(?=\-\d+)
This will check for a one or more numbers, followed by a dash, followed by one or more numbers, but only match the first set.
In response to your comment, here's a regex that will check for a number following a -, while accounting for potential negative (-) numbers:
Regex regex = new Regex(#"(?<=\-)\-?\d+");
(?<=\-) - Negative lookbehind which will check and make sure there is a preceding -
\-? - Checks for either zero or one dashes
\d+ - One or more digits
(?'number'\d+)- will work ( no need to escape ). In this example the group containing the single number is the named group 'number'.
if you want to match both groups with optional sign try:
#"(?'first'-?\d+)-(?'second'-?\d+)"
See it working here.
Just to describe, nothing complicated, just using -? to match an optional - and \d+ to match one or more digit. a literal - match itself.
here's some documentation that I use:
http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/46/CSharp-Regular-Expressions-Cheat-Sheet
in the comments section of that page, it suggests escaping the dash with '\-'
make sure you escape your escape character \
You would escape the special meaning of - in regex language (means range) using a backslash (\). Since backslash has a special meaning in C# literals to escape quotes or be part of some characters, you need to escape that with another backslash(\). So essentially it would be \d+\\-.
\b\d*(?=\-) you will want to look ahead for the dash
\b = is start at a word boundry
\d = match any decimal digit
* = match the previous as many times as needed
(?=\-) = look ahead for the dash
Edited for Formatting issue with the slash not showing after posting

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