Stuck on a regular expression in C#

Question

I have this currently

([\w\-"]+)[ ]+OBJECT-TYPE[^[::=]*]*::=[ ]*\{[ ]*([\w\-"]+) ([\w\-"]+)

What it does is search for stuff like this:

DATA1 OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX SEQUENCE OF ContactInfoEntry
MAX-ACCESS not-accessible
STATUS current
DESCRIPTION
"A table containing Contact Info information"
::= { DATA2  DATA3 }

I just had one problem that thought i fixed

OBJECT-TYPE[^[::=]*]*::=

This was meant to search for any chars after the string "OBJECT-TYPE" that wasnt "::=" until it actualy found "::=" this worked well until i noticed that

[^[::=]*]*

actualy meant meant : or = and not the excact string "::=" so how do i fix that?

EDIT: If someone is still here so that i dont need to open another question, how do i ignore any and all chars, symbols, numbers, etc between two ".
Example:
dont ignore this "ignore everything that is in here" dont ignore again "ignore again" etc

Jerry · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-18T05:35:48.863

2

You can use a negative lookahead in this kind of construct:

(?:(?!::=).)*

To match any character except ::=.

By the way, [^[::=]*]* will match any character(s) except [, :, =, ] and then 0 or more ].

For the second part, you can use something like this, with some simplification applied:

([\w"-]+)[ ]+OBJECT-TYPE(?:"[^"]*"|(?!::=).)*::=[ ]*{[ ]*([\w"-]+) ([\w"-]+)

edited Jul 18 '14 at 05:35

answered Jul 17 '14 at 12:36

Jerry

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Is there no other option? I dont like lookaheads they take to much CPU power on large and many files, – Vajura Jul 17 '14 at 12:58
@Vajura I don't like them much either, but no, it would be much much more complex if you use negated classes. You might search 'alternative for negative lookahead', the first one I get is [this](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1537425/1578604). – Jerry Jul 17 '14 at 13:02
Can you define what you mean by "ignore" and "don't ignore"? Regex is about matching and not matching... Maybe you mean to say that `::=` between quotes should not be treated as true `::=`, sort of like a comment? – Jerry Jul 17 '14 at 13:03
Oh yea sorry bad wording, i just meant that everything between commas should be match for the regex expression and yea as you said it should not be treated as a true ::= – Vajura Jul 18 '14 at 05:25
@Vajura Ok, I'm not sure where exactly you want this behaviour, but I have edited my answer so that things within quotes after `OBJECT-TYPE` are 'ignored'. Let me know whether that works for you or not :) – Jerry Jul 18 '14 at 05:36

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 17 '14 at 12:38

0

Try with (:|=) that will pick one or the other. Not sure if you need to escape : or = though.

answered Jul 17 '14 at 12:38

Rodrigo

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 17 '14 at 12:44

0

You can try negative lookarounds:

^((?!::=).)*

answered Jul 17 '14 at 12:44

Pradeep Kumar

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Stuck on a regular expression in C#

3 Answers3