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Hannuka, Chanukah, Hanukkah...Due to transliteration from another language and character set, there are many ways to spell the name of this holiday. How many legitimate spellings can you come up with?

Now, write a regular expression that will recognise all of them.

vvvvv
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gbarry
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  • Similar question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5365283/regular-expression-to-search-for-gadaffi – Andrew Grimm Sep 18 '11 at 09:17
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    There's probably a badge for having a question lasting twelve years before being closed. And I missed it by twelve days! – gbarry Dec 12 '20 at 07:35

7 Answers7

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According to http://www.holidays.net/chanukah/spelling.htm, it can be spelled any of the following ways:

Chanuka
Chanukah
Chanukkah
Channukah
Hanukah
Hannukah
Hanukkah
Hanuka
Hanukka
Hanaka
Haneka
Hanika
Khanukkah

Here is my regex that matches all of them:

/(Ch|H|Kh)ann?[aeiu]kk?ah?/

Edit: Or this, without branches:

/[CHK]h?ann?[aeiu]kk?ah?/
Paige Ruten
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  • Unfortunately it also matches strings like Khannekkah. – Michael Burr Dec 23 '08 at 03:09
  • A reg exp is probably not the best solution for a spell checker. – Ates Goral Dec 23 '08 at 03:12
  • Yes, but I think in most cases, any string it matches that isn't in the list is just a misspelling of the word (if this word can be misspelled) and should be matched anyways. – Paige Ruten Dec 23 '08 at 03:12
  • I think a regex should only match what it's meant to match. – Kenan Banks Dec 23 '08 at 03:13
  • I took this simply as a puzzle. – Michael Burr Dec 23 '08 at 03:13
  • The site I linked to says that there is no exact English translation of the word... it only lists some common spellings. I think pretty much every word this regex matches is a valid way of spelling this word. – Paige Ruten Dec 23 '08 at 03:20
  • Since when do false positives not invalidate a regex? I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. – Kenan Banks Dec 23 '08 at 03:21
  • All the "false positives" are still ways you could spell the word. That list isn't a complete list of spellings. (Read my last comment) – Paige Ruten Dec 23 '08 at 03:27
  • I don't think you're getting the point of my last couple comments... 'Khannekkah' is a valid spelling even if no one uses it. All that matters is that it sounds close to the original Hebrew word. – Paige Ruten Dec 23 '08 at 04:00
  • This is the shortest one I could come up with to match and only match the cases listed: `(Ch|H)an(nu|uk|u)kah|(Hanuk|Chanu|Han(u|a|e|i))ka|Khanukkah` Khanukkah is an odd-ball because it ends with an `h` but only has the double-`k`, single-`n` variant. The rest can be combined in two distinct patterns: Channukah|Hannukah|Chanukah|Hanukah|Chanukkah|Hanukkah = `(Ch|H)an(nu|uk|u)kah` Hanukka|Chanuka|Hanuka|Hanaka|Haneka|Hanika = `(Hanuk|Chanu|Han(u|a|e|i))ka` – Martijn Dec 11 '20 at 13:48
4

Call me a sucker for readability.

In Python:

def find_hanukkah(s):
   import re

   spellings = ['hannukah', 'channukah', 'hanukkah'] # etc...

   for m in re.finditer('|'.join(spellings), s, re.I):
      print m.group()



find_hanukkah("Hannukah Channukah, Hanukkah")
Kenan Banks
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  • I prefer regular expressions. This sort of thing won't scale. At some point you have to break down and just use regex! – BobbyShaftoe Dec 23 '08 at 03:36
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    Your regex will still have to encode all of the accepted spellings of channukah. My version makes it clear what is and isn't acceptable input. Also, adding one more spelling to my code is trivial, but a regex might be made completely invalid with a single additional spelling. – Kenan Banks Dec 23 '08 at 05:28
1

Try this:

  /^[ck]?hann?ukk?ah?$/i
A P
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chaos
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1

Something like C?hann?uk?kah? matches most of the common cases. There also a bunch of weirder spellings C?hann?uk?kah?|Han[aei]ka|Khanukkah matches almost every spelling I could think of (that had at least half a million hits on google).

1

((Ch|H|X|Х|Kh|J)[aа](н|n{1,2})(у|ou|[auei])(к|k|q){1,2}[aа]h?)|(חנו?כה)

This regex is much more inclusive and covers all of the following options:

Channuka Channukah Channukka Channukkah Chanuka Chanukah Chanukah Chanukka Chanukkah Chanuqa Hanaka Haneka Hanika Hannuka Hannukah Hannukka Hannukkah Hanoukka Hanuka Hanukah Hanukka Hanukkah Januka Khanukkah Xanuka Ханука Ханука חנוכה חנכה

Liron
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0

I think the only approved spellings in English are Hanukkah and Chanukh, so it's something like

/(Ch|H)anuk?kah/

Or maybe even better

/(Chanukah|Hanukkah)/
Charlie Martin
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    I have seen half a dozen in common usage. If you want to be "Correct" you should go with the hebrew letters חנוכה of course for people who can't read Hebrew that is less useful – Zachary K Dec 22 '14 at 16:06
  • _Forward_ isn't my favorite Jewish blog, but this is a pretty interesting article on the spelling: http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/148856/yes-virginia-hanukkah-has-a-correct-spelling/ – Charlie Martin Dec 22 '14 at 17:21
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I like Triptych's answer, but i would take it one step forward... also in python:

def valid(spelling):
    import re

    regex_spelling = re.compile(r'^[cCkK]{0,1}han{1,2}uk{1,2}ah$')
    valid = regex_spelling.match(spelling)

    if valid:
        print 'Valid spelling'
    else:
        print spelling, " is not a spelling for the word"

to use it:

valid("hanukkah")
Robert S.
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EroSan
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