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Re^3: substituting capture groups substrings (?...)by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) |
on Jul 14, 2015 at 18:00 UTC ( [id://1134769]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
I would be tempted to go even a little further down the look-around path and specify that the four-digit groups be exactly four digits, i.e., that they be delimited by non-digits.
The OPed example data contain an instance of a single-digit data point: '37 8 17'. If I saw such a two-one-two pattern in the output, how would I know (other than by going back and examining the original data) that it was not a regex fix-up artifact? Of course, there aren't any five-digit groups in the original data, right? Famous Last Words. This is, at least potentially, an illustration of the classic regex lament "I had a problem and I thought, 'I know, I'll solve it with a regex!' Now I have two problems." Much as I love regexes, I have to admit they can turn nasty on ya pretty quickly. Best to be precise. Update: Come to think of it, if single-digit data values are valid, who's to say that the proper representation of '3840' is not '3 84 0'? More information is needed to make a useful decision here. Give a man a fish: <%-(-(-(-<
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