Need some regex help here please :)

[shaolinman829]

I suck at regex's and I need a little hope. Hopefully there is a guru out there to help me on this one. I want to do a match on the following:

one or more numeric characters [0-9]
zero or more blank spaces \s
zero or more dash characters -

I've tried everything I know for now, but I still can't get my unit test to pass my conditions above. Anyone out there who could help? Thanks so much.

[sicarie]

I suck at regex's and I need a little hope. Hopefully there is a guru out there to help me on this one. I want to do a match on the following:

one or more numeric characters [0-9]
zero or more blank spaces \s
zero or more dash characters -

I've tried everything I know for now, but I still can't get my unit test to pass my conditions above. Anyone out there who could help? Thanks so much.

What does your program look like right now?

[shaolinman829]

What does your program look like right now?

Well, I've tried several things. Here are a few:

mystring.matches("(\\d*)?(-*)?(\\s*)?")

and I've tried things this way:

Pattern patter1 = Pattern.compile("(\\d)+(\\s)*(-)*");
Matcher m = patter1.matcher(mystring);
return m.find();

[sicarie]

Well, I've tried several things. Here are a few:

mystring.matches("(\\d*)?(-*)?(\\s*)?")

and I've tried things this way:

Pattern patter1 = Pattern.compile("(\\d)+(\\s)*(-)*");
Matcher m = patter1.matcher(mystring);
return m.find();

Are you specifically grouping them to pull them out? If not, you can omit the parentheses - have you tried [0-9]+ for the digits?

Is there anything on the line either before or after that is matched? You might need a .* to continue the search through the end of the line...

What are you trying to parse/find?

[shaolinman829]

Are you specifically grouping them to pull them out? If not, you can omit the parentheses - have you tried [0-9]+ for the digits?

Is there anything on the line either before or after that is matched? You might need a .* to continue the search through the end of the line...

What are you trying to parse/find?

I need to verify a serial number is correct. Ok this is what I have now:

public static boolean validateValue(String value)
{
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[0-9]+[-]*[\\s]*");
Matcher m = p.matcher(value);
return m.find();
}

The thing is the string must contain as least 1 digit, but the "-" and " " characters are optional (there can be zero or more of them). No other characters are allowed. The "No other characters allowed" part is the main issue I've been having whenever I think I've solved the problem. Should I do another check of some sort before? I'm not sure how to do the nots for the optional "-" and " " characters when at least 1 digit is required.

[sicarie]

I need to verify a serial number is correct. Ok this is what I have now:

public static boolean validateValue(String value)
{
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[0-9]+[-]*[\\s]*");
Matcher m = p.matcher(value);
return m.find();
}

The thing is the string must contain as least 1 digit, but the "-" and " " characters are optional (there can be zero or more of them). No other characters are allowed. The "No other characters allowed" part is the main issue I've been having whenever I think I've solved the problem. Should I do another check of some sort before? I'm not sure how to do the nots for the optional "-" and " " characters when at least 1 digit is required.

Here's Java's regex tutorial.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutor...gex/index.html

Have you compiled that? It looks correct (without me actually creating tests for it and running it...). With regex's + means "1 or more" and * means "0 or more".
At the moment, that regex will pick up

1
1-
12
12-
1234567897654
23456789765-

Which is the way you are describing the serials (which seems a little odd to me). Are the integers allowed anywhere in between the '-' or the whitespace?

I think you might want something like [0-9]+[-]*[0-9]*[\\s]*[0-9]* but I'm not sure - are there a few example serials?

[shaolinman829]

Thanks so much for the help. Yes I compiled everything and it gives me correct output for any combination of white space, digits, and - characters (assuming the condition that there is at least 1 digit). The problem I am having is if someone enters (for example):

1111-11 111-x111
1x
1-x
--- x
etc.

(I will use the character 'x' here for example only, assume x is any non-digit, non-whitespace, non-dash character):
If 'x' is anywhere in the string it should fail.

And I don't write the requirements, I just code them :-)

[shaolinman829]

This gives me what I need from my test and the conditions I posed above (although it would be nice to know how to do this in one statement):

public static boolean validateValue1(String value)
{
Pattern p2 = Pattern.compile("[^0-9-\\s]");
Matcher m2 = p2.matcher(value);
if(m2.find())
{
return false;
}
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[0-9]+[-]*[\\s]*");
Matcher m = p.matcher(value);
return m.find();
}

Thanks for all of your help!