Regexp: how to match NOT ellips

[leuce]

G'day everyone

What would the regular expression be to NOT match "...". In other words, I want the match result to be "positive" if three consecutive dots (periods, fullstops) were not found.

In other words, if I have this script:

$question = "Soek tans."
; $rule = ???
If StringRegExp ($question, $rule, 0) = 1 Then
MsgBox (0, "", "Yes", 0)
EndIf

...and I wish to get a "Yes" message if "..." is not in the $question, what should the $rule be?

Ideally I would like to exclude the three dots as a single group, but if that is not possible, being able to exclude them as three separate dots would be fine as well.

Thanks

Samuel

[Melba23]

leuce,

Just use Not to reverse the match:

Global $aString[2] = ["abcde...abcde", "abcde---abcde"]

For $i = 0 To 1

    If Not StringRegExp($aString[$i], "(.){3}") Then
        ConsoleWrite("Element " & $i & " - '...' not found" & @CRLF)
    EndIf

Next

Now you only action if the "..." is NOT found.

M23

[leuce]

[^.]{3,3}

Just use Not to reverse the match...

I don't want to use "Not" to reverse the match because then the user would have to maintain two sets of regular expressions -- one that matches If Not statements and that that matches If statements. I want to give the user the ability to specify a regular expession, which is then executed by the script.

Can AutoIt's regex do this? I tried all kinds of options that seemed logical to me... but to no avail. Maybe I should just tell the user "sorry, you can't check for the absence of three dots".

Samuel

[Melba23]

leuce,

How about explaining further what it is you want to do with all this. Giving us only a part formulated question is, as we have just proved, very unlikely to get you the answer you want.

M23

[leuce]

How about explaining further what it is you want to do with all this.

I have a script that checks lines a large text file for the presence of strings. The user specifies these strings in a separate file (say, a strings file). If a string is present in a line in the text file, the script outputs a report that informs the user about it. The purpose of this is to help check for errors or portential errors in the written text. If a certain word or phrase does or does not occur in the writtten text, it may be an error, and the user wants to be warned about it.

Apart from simple strings, it would be great if the user could also specify regular expressions, because regular expressions would allow the user to specify more natural language.

For example, if a line of text contains "the quick brown fox" and the strings file contains the rule "the brown fox", and I would like the rule to match the line, then only a regular expression would do that.

In the case of the three dots, the issue is that if "tans" is present but three dots are not, then the report should contain an entry. So if the line of text is "Stuur tans.", then the report should contain an entry because the word "tans" is present but the three dots is absent.

Another hypothetical example may be that if the line of text contains "diningroom", "laundryroom", "familyroom" but not "bedroom", then there should be a report about it. In such a case, the user would specify something like ^(bed)room or perhaps (bed){0,0}(room), which I had thought would match "diningroom" but not "bedroom"... but that's not the right syntax, and I have no idea what the correct syntax would be. I can't seem to figure out how the "not" in regular expressions work.

Here's another example that I'm breaking my head over: The sentence "geen doel nie." should not trigger a report but the sentence "geen doel." should. I had thought that I could specify bgeenb.*^(nie) or perhaps something like bgeenb.*(nie){0,0} to do this, but these regular expressions do not have the desired effect.

Samuel

Edited October 20, 2012 by leuce

[Melba23]

leuce,

I will have a think about the "..." case, but I can help immediately with the "room" search:

Global $aRooms[4] = ["diningroom", "laundryroom", "familyroom", "bedroom"]

For $i = 0 To 3
    If StringRegExp($aRooms[$i], "(?i)(?<!bed)room") Then
        ConsoleWrite($i & " does NOT contain 'bedroom'" & @CRLF)
    EndIf
Next

The structure is called a "negative lookbehind" and is only true if "room" is not immediately preceded by "bed".

M23