How to match text in-between a character pattern with regular expression

Question

Below is the text that I have:

Etiam porta sem malesuada magna mollis euismod. Praesent commodo cursus magna,
vel scelerisque nisl consectetur et. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue. 
Donec sed odio dui. Donec id elit non mi porta gravida at eget metus.
|------|------| 
|6 | TEXT | 
|7 | TEXT | 
|8,9 | TEXT | 
|------|------|
Etiam porta sem malesuada magna mollis euismod. Praesent commodo cursus magna,
vel scelerisque nisl consectetur et. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra

I want to match this bit how would I do with a regular expression?

|6 | TEXT | 
|7 | TEXT | 
|8,9 | TEXT |

Here is what I have so far

How can I achieve this?

You need to be more explicit about the rules for determining the match. Do you want to match anything that is between two lines |------|------| or must the lines of text to be matched have the the specific form as in your example (i.e., | followed by one positive integer or two or more positive intergers followed by...)? In the latter case must the text to be matched be bracketed by the line |------|------|? Is it important that a regular expression be used or are you just assuming that's the only way of doing it? — Cary Swoveland
– Cary Swoveland, Commented Feb 4, 2016 at 12:39

RedLaser · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-04 12:22:39Z

1

The following matches what you need

\|\d(,\d)* \| .+ \|

It matches a | then a digit, then zero or more , and digit, then |, then any text, then |

As shown here: https://regex101.com/r/eB0vI3/2

edited Feb 4, 2016 at 12:22

answered Feb 4, 2016 at 12:19

RedLaser

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3 Comments

David Hoelzer Over a year ago

Not sure why that was down voted. Looks fine to me.

Wiktor Stribiżew Over a year ago

I think it is because of [A-z] (that does not match only letters) and in general we do not know what is in between | and |. And no idea how big the integer part can be.

sawa Over a year ago

Regular expression by itself is just an object. It does not do anything.

Cary Swoveland · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-04 12:29:30Z

1

Must you use a regular expression? If your string is str, you can write;

puts str.split('|------|------|')[1]
  # |6 | TEXT | 
  # |7 | TEXT | 
  # |8,9 | TEXT |

answered Feb 4, 2016 at 12:29

Cary Swoveland

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1 Comment

sawa Over a year ago

Oh, you used a fixed form.

sawa · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-04 12:25:59Z

0

string.split(/^[-|]+\s*\n/)[1]

............

answered Feb 4, 2016 at 12:25

sawa

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1 Comment

Jordan Running Over a year ago

Downvoted for "....." in place of explanatory text. I know you're a good writer, @sawa. You can do so much better.

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-04 15:42:38Z

0

I would use your current pattern as a delimiter and use the lazy dot matching pattern to match the subtexts you need (using a capturing group in the pattern around that subtext with String#scan):

/^\|-+\|-+\|\p{Zs}*\s*(.*?)(?=\s*^\|-+\|-+\|)/m

See regex demo. I added some more subpatterns to "trim" the output "on the fly". /m modifier is used to make a . match any character including a newline. ^\|-+\|-+\|\p{Zs}*\s* will match the leading delimiter, (.*?) will match and capture the shortest string up to the next delimiter, and (?=\s*^\|-+\|-+\|) will not be consumed (in case you want overlapping matches). Remove (?= and the last ) to avoid overlapping matches.

rx = /^\|-+\|-+\|\p{Zs}*\s*(.*?)(?=\s*^\|-+\|-+\|)/m
s = "Donec sed odio dui. Donec id elit non mi porta gravida at eget metus.\n|------|------| \n|6 | TEXT | \n|7 | TEXT | \n|8,9 | TEXT | \n|------|------|\nEtiam porta sem malesuada magna mollis euismod. Praesent commodo cursus magna,\nvel scelerisque nisl consectetur et. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra "
puts s.scan(rx)

IDEONE demo

edited Feb 4, 2016 at 15:42

answered Feb 4, 2016 at 12:54

Wiktor Stribiżew

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2 Comments

Casimir et Hippolyte Over a year ago

\h doesn't exist in Ruby.

Wiktor Stribiżew Over a year ago

Okey-dokey, still, \p{Zs} is there.

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