regular expression matching date, author and agency in string

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello All, I wanted regular expression for the following patterns like Nauzer Bharucha, TNN 10 September 2009, 12:01am IST IANS 3 September 2009, 02:57pm IST regular expression should return date in first group author in second group and agency in third group

for below pattern it should return Nauzer Bharucha, TNN 10 September 2009, 12:01am IST

$1 = 10 September 2009 $2 = Nauzer Bharucha $3 = TNN

In second case author is nil

Any ideas ?

Sandip

2

Not to sound rude, but you should do it yourself. It will help you in your programming career. Moreover, it’s not a rails related issue.

You can use Internet search for learning more about regex. This is first result I got on Google: http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html

Thanks, Abhinav

PS: Please don’t outsource your work to this mailing list, and if you do, please do tell us what all you tried.

3

Hi --

Hello All,

I wanted regular expression for the following patterns like

Nauzer Bharucha, TNN 10 September 2009, 12:01am IST

IANS 3 September 2009, 02:57pm IST

regular expression should return date in first group author in second group and agency in third group

for below pattern it should return Nauzer Bharucha, TNN 10 September 2009, 12:01am IST

$1 = 10 September 2009 $2 = Nauzer Bharucha $3 = TNN

In second case author is nil

Any ideas ?

I'm in a "teaching to fish" mood :slight_smile:

If you're not yet thinking in regex terms, you need to dissect and describe your pattern, and then translate it into a regular expression. Here's a description, as I understand it.

     zero or one of        (one or more non-comma characters)        a comma        one or more spaces      (three uppercase letters)      one or more spaces      (one or more non-comma characters)

etc.

Also, note that you can't choose which capture will be $1, $2, etc. They are assigned strictly in the order in which the left parentheses appear, left to right (unless you use (?:slight_smile: to suppress inclusion of a particular group).

David