Re: Re: Regular Expressions: Call for Examples

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in reply to Re: Regular Expressions: Call for Examples
in thread Regular Expressions: Call for Examples

Since I'm not yet the regex master I aspire to be, I can't authoritatively state that this solution is better, but it seems to work.

If you're working with ordered item labels you can make your assertion more specific:

$n = 1;
s/((??{$n+1})\))(?{$n++})/\n$1/g;

The first iteration matches "2)" and replaces it with "\n2)", the second "3)", and so on.

conv

Update: I should know better than to post when I'm tired. Someone just pointed out to me that it would be much neater to do:

$n = 2; ++$n while s/$n(?=\))/\n$n/

Thanks, Aristotle, you're right. The while loop substitution isn't equivalent because it will make replacements in any order (at any position in the string) while the original substitution I posted will not.

[Aristotle]

Actually, they are not interchangeable: the latter loses the "ordered items" assumption. Observe what they do with 2) bar 3) asfgh 7) lorem 6) ipsum 1) foo 5) baz 4) blah


I tried fixing that using \G, but didn't come up with anything useful in 5 minutes and gave up since it would have been a lot more complicated than your first regex which I believe is just perfect.

japhy: I like the scenario presented here. This is a regex (series) I'd propose you pick up; it's simple in premise and not far from something one might actually have to do one day, and it's not hard even for a novice to follow along on the subleties in the differences of each approach. A perfect teaching example, if you ask me.

Makeshifts last the longest.