Regex question

Ruby
1

So I am scanning through chat logs looking for messages where I
mentioned “points”. My current regex is:
text.scan /^(.)([-+]?[0-9]+\s+points?)(.)$/i
So I’d like each match in 3 groups:

  1. The message up until the part containing the points
  2. The points part. This could have a + or - prefix, 1 or more digits,
    and an optional s after point
  3. The rest of the message line.

My problem is, the (.*) is eating up parts that I would like to appear
in group 2. I just bought a book on regex but I’m not very far yet :frowning:
Any help would be appreciated!

2

You could try matching anything that’s not a -, + or number in your
first
group, e.g.

([^-+0-9]*)

Note that I’m assuming Ruby uses Perl Compatible Regular Expressions

Cheers,

Paul

3

Paul wrote:

You could try matching anything that’s not a -, + or number in your
first
group, e.g.

([^-+0-9]*)

Note that I’m assuming Ruby uses Perl Compatible Regular Expressions

Cheers,

Paul

But then a message like:
“I’m 3 years old and have 80 points”
wouldn’t come out right, correct?

4

Make it non-greedy: (.*?)

HTH,
Sebastian

Life saver. Thanks!

5

J. Cooper wrote:

My current regex is:
text.scan /^(.)([-+]?[0-9]+\s+points?)(.)$/i
[…]
My problem is, the (.*) is eating up parts that I would like to appear
in group 2.

Make it non-greedy: (.*?)

HTH,
Sebastian