Thanks guys that was quick response; In the context of Any2XML, which forces me to use a regex for top-down parsing, I need to use regex. Even if the regex is slow, that is fine. If it is impossible to do this in regex, of course, I would resort to split().
Can this be done using regex? Why does \1 not work? These are my questions. Thanks again... ---Closing information gaps----- Ranga Nathan, Reliance Technology >>SEVIS solution now! http://goreliance.com >>Live demo at http://any2xml.com/docs/timesheet_demo.shtml<< >>Get free COBOLExplorer at http://goreliance.com/download-products << > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mark Aisenberg > Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 2:15 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [Boston.pm] Calling regex gurus ..A regex question.. > > > Your '\1' question aside: > Your solution requires you to know the number of patterns in > the string. For long strings, a regex could be slow. Why not > just 'split' on whitespace into an array and then use array > indices to easily extract the items you want? > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > On Behalf Of Ranga Nathan > Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 1:42 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Boston.pm] Calling regex gurus ..A regex question.. > > > I need to parse a string that has multiple occurrences of a > pattern that is determined by an embeded count. For example: > > 02 s1n1 s1n2 3 s2n1 s2n2 s2n3 1 s3n1 4 s4n1 s4n2 s4n3 s4n4 > > 02 is the count and I need to extract s1n1 and s2n2 > > 3 is the count and I need to extract s2n1, s2n2 and s2n3 > > And so on. > > So I tried to do: > $var = > /(.*?)\s+((?:.*?\s+){\1})(.*?)\s+((?:.*?\s+){\3})(.*?)\s+((?:. > *?\s+){\5} > )/; > > And was expecting "02" "s1n1 s1n2 " "3" "s2n1 s2n2 s2n3 " "1" > "s3n1 " "4" "s4n1 s4n2 s4n3 s4n4 " as matches. > > This does not work. > The \1, \2 etc are not evaluated as 'iterators'. I tried the > experimental ?{} too. > > > > ---Closing information gaps----- > Ranga Nathan, Reliance Technology > >>SEVIS solution now! http://goreliance.com > >>Live demo at http://any2xml.com/docs/timesheet_demo.shtml<< > >>Get free COBOLExplorer at http://goreliance.com/download-products << > > _______________________________________________ > Boston-pm mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm > > > > _______________________________________________ > Boston-pm mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm > _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
