Re: [Regexp] (no subject)

[Jino John Thevareth]

I think this is what he means:

Assuming that this is the list of characters he wants to search for     
[a-zA-Z0-9,.'&@_-]
In the given string, he wants to search for these characters , but he 
wants to ignore if he finds two given characters adjacent to each other...

For example, if he were searching for just the three characters   a    b  
c,
he should extract these characters only when they are present 
individually..... 
 He shouldn't extract   characters like  ab, ac, bc    or  even abc  , 
because here you have valid characters adjacent to each other.
For this simple example, I would write a regular expression like this:
[^abc][abc][^abc]
This just means that I'm searching for the characters a, b or c   , 
provided these characters are not surrounded by    a, b, or c
But before parsing the string, you will have to append a single (junk) 
character to both ends of the string...

Unfortunately, I don't have the required set up in my computer to try this 
out...     Could any one please add to what I said and help him out...
regs,
Jino


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If I understand you correct. You can catch this with repeating
operators. See this from the manual:


-----------------------------------------------
# Repeating Operators
These symbols operate on the previous atomic expression.

     ? matches the preceding expression or the null string
     * matches the null string or any number of repetitions of the
preceding expression
     + matches one or more repetitions of the preceding expression
     {m} matches exactly m repetitions of the one-character expression
     {m,n} matches between m and n repetitions of the preceding
expression, inclusive
     {m,} matches m or more repetitions of the preceding expression
-----------------------------------------------



[a-zA-Z0-9,.'&@_-]{2,} would catch all occurences of at least two of
your character class.

Greetings
Thomas


MarK Neisler wrote:
> I have a problem that I am trying to solve using regular expressions.
>
> To validate form input we have a java bean that will take a regular
> expression to match for validation.
>
> Here is the regular expression I have.
>
> [a-zA-Z0-9,.'&@_-]
>
> this works however I need a regular expression that will disallow any of
> the symbols being next to each other in the string. for instance -- -,
> @@ &' ,- and so on. Any suggestions? I have been working on this for 3
> days any help greatly appreciated.