Still problem with RegExps in autoit....

[Newb]

Hi all!

IN BRIEF

Have this string

239,827 and 292,928,398 and 92,365 but also 293,302,320

but not 212,323,443,555,645 or 30,34 or also 392,33 and not even 034,392,233

Want a regexp that catches the first 4 numbers (commas included) along with all numbers up to 999,999,999.

this is what i came up with

(^[1-9]\d{0,2}(,?\d{0,3}){0,2})

but it does catch only the first one.

DETAILED VERSION

The engine that runs autoit regexps is bugging me...

I have no problem developing regexes with Perl or this http://www.perlfect.com/articles/regextutor.shtml which uses a perl engine...

but when it comes to autoit there is always some kind of problem.

I need to catch numbers with comma inbetween in the format shown below (they must go from 0 to 999,999,999 with the comma and can't have a 0 in the fist group of 3 numbers)

The test string is:

239,827 and 292,928,398 and 92,365 but also 293,302,320

but not 212,323,443,555,645 or 30,34 or also 392,33 and not even 034,392,233

and the regexp i managed to write is:

(^[1-9]\d{0,2}(,?\d{0,3}))

So the results are limited to this

[0]= 239,827

[1]=,827

whil i want it to catch these numbers

239,827 and 292,928,398 and 92,365 but also 293,302,320

and not the others.

The problem in this code is that i don't know how to make it repeat the 3 digits after a comma.

I thought about this:

(^[1-9]\d{0,2}(,?\d{0,3}){0,2})

But still autoit catches only this:

[0]= 239,827

[1]=

Here's some quick code for testing if you need:

#include <Array.au3>
$mu="239,827 and 292,928,398 and 92,365"
$mud=StringRegExp($mu,"(^[1-9]\d{0,2}(,?\d{0,3}){0,2})",3)
_ArrayDisplay($mud,"jjj")

How can I solve? Thanks

Edited April 7, 2012 by Newb

[Jos]

Something like this: ?

#include <Array.au3>
$mu=" 239,827 and 292,928,398 and 92,365 but not 212,323,443,555,645 or 30,34 or also 392,33 and not even 034,392,233"
$mud=StringRegExp($mu,"[^d,]{1}([1-9]{1,3}(?:,d{3}){1,2})[^d,]",3)
_ArrayDisplay($mud,"jjj")

[Newb]

Yeah, that works nice. THANK YOU

Can you help me to understand it please?

So

[^d,]{1}

what does this do? From how i read it is that the first charachter should NOT be any SINGLE number (0-9) or a comma.

But test takes even 0,232,000. Which is not correct. I can't really understand what is for in that expression please explane me i've gone mad trying to get it lol

([1-9]{1,3}

This catches any number repeated between 1 and 3 times which falls under the category [1-9]

Moreover this must be corrected into

([0-9]{1,3} otherwise numbers like 1,000,000 will not be taken.

(?:,d{3}){1,2})[^d,]

Here's another mistery....

First, does this do another separate check or it checks numbers right after the previous checks? Or in other words the one before and this one are separate checks (like one checks the number I want and this one checks the numbers I don't want)???

About the expression:

?: in help it'r called Non-capturing group. So as reading the help, everything after until the closed parenthesis will not be taken/matched in my result array, right???

after, i read that this expression will not consider any number between 0-9 repeated 3 times (and again {1,2} repeated between 1 or 2 times) but a number like 000,233,323 it's taken as valid, as well as 212,212,333 (which is a regular number i'd accept) and again I don't know what it does at the end.... please explain me...

Edited April 7, 2012 by Newb

[jchd]

BTW, the engine AutoIt uses for regular expression is PCRE (Perl-Compatible Regular Expression). See http://www.pcre.org/

Compatibility with Perl regexpes is high, very high!

[Newb]

Thanks jchd, I was already aware about the existance of that document, and I did read it a bit some time ago. It was way too extended and complicated so I dropped it, but anyway, I ended up findind a solution anyay, mainly thanks to Jos example regex, which almost does all the works but needed to be perfected to work well, and to work well with my needs too.

At the moment, the best I could do is this:

[^,0d][1-9]{1,3}(?:,[^d]?d{3}){0,2}[^d]

Which does the thing I need pretty good (It's still not perfect, but whatever, it does the job pretty well!)

Thanks to all for the support and the help. Finally I can help other users too after much time asking, but sometimes, meh, I still need to ask...

Edited April 8, 2012 by Newb

[jchd]

No problem, there is always somebody willing to help here.

BTW, the complete documentation for PCRE comes with the source code tarball. Note that AutoIt PCRE could be a few releases back, but that only impacts fairly advanced features or dark corners.

[Newb]

Good, the one in use now works anyway, but in a slightly different way than pure PERL parsers. (actually i find it a bit harder, but whatever, autoit is ALL awesome so I forgive you )

Thanks and happy Easter to all of you (if you even celebrate it )