Regular Expressions

I guess that is correct, you will need to strip that manually somehow. Alternatively check if there is some other match that prefixes all the links that do not start with http(s).

Yes, the documentation is right there on the front page. You put your own test data into the box labelled "Text". Then add your regex in the box titled "Expression". The menus on the left point you to the documentation for all the regex types. What could be simpler?

Then there's either a bug with the regular expression engine you're using, or there's something wrong with your code. [^\s]+ explicitly excludes any spaces. That pattern will match the first run of characters which are not spaces to appear after the prefix "Name is: ". "These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

You're welcome! Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640 Never throw anything away, Griff Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

Thanks a lot!

Java/perl provide the following \b That represents a 'boundary' however you should read up on that to insure that is what you really want. Might also keep in mind that Java/Perl are aggressive in that they look for the best match not the first match. That means that it will keep trying until it is sure. That can result in a lot of processing - sometimes leading to days or even infinite searches. Although your current formats should not do that. Anchoring to anything will optimize the search.

Sonhospa wrote: no capture if there are more lines between ... Exactly why a regex is not the best way to do this.

I'll check out capture groups - thank you. And thanks for the thought on Expresso but I'm on a Mac. michael

How about if we just drop all the words in (parens) and display what's left? #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my(@a,@b,$i,$j,$k,$s,$t); my(@out,$ins,$outs); $ins="clicking the (Run Match) button (or F5) to see what (happens). "; print "\n"; $outs=$ins; $outs=~s/\(.+?\)//g; $outs=undupespace($outs); print "$outs\n"; exit; # Exit main pgm. ################################################################### sub undupespace # Remove dupe spaces. Max 1 consecutive space. {my($l)=@_; $l=~s/ {2,}/ /g; return $l; # undupespace } Output: clicking the button to see what .

Thank you George. Yes it worked.

I never thought to move the ? to the end. You're right though, it is the same result as {0,1}. Thanks again!

Yes, if the string doesn't match that expression, then it's not valid. The HTML5 pattern attribute[^] works in the same way - if the entered string doesn't match the pattern, then it's not valid. "These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

So you want to do this in SQL?