How can I ignore leading zero's in a RegEx capture?

Question

I have a database which contains ID such as

        ID
000000000000000000000PBC_1164321
00000000000000000000000RP_395954
00000000000000000000000MOP_395954
00000000000000000000000395954

I want to get only the data after the leading 0's something like this:

ID
PBC_1164321
RP_395954
MOP_395954
395954

I am testing it on https://regexr.com. I tried using ^(0*) but it selects all the 0's. I want the opposite of it, not select all the leading 0 but everything after it. Kindly help.

I am not using any language such as Python and R. Just want to use regex to select/match anything apart from leading 0's

Try with `sub`. You can specify the start of the string (`^`) followed by 0 or more 0's and replace it with `""`, `sub(^0*", "", df1$ID)` — akrun, Apr 08 '19 at 15:25
can you try that on the link i used in the question. It doesnt recognize "sub" — Kshitij Yadav, Apr 08 '19 at 15:26
@akrun the ^0* is only selecting 0's, I want the opposite of that. select everything after the 0 — Kshitij Yadav, Apr 08 '19 at 15:29
You can try the pattern `"^0*"` at your link---all that link does is the regex matching. You might want to do a lot of things with regex matches--extract them, extract the whole string if there is a match, return a logical if there is match, replace the match, etc. `sub` is an R function that replaces (substitutes) the match. A nice way to remove 0s is to replace the 0s with nothing `""`. That is what akrun proposes. — Gregor Thomas, Apr 08 '19 at 15:29
Khsitij, did you try it? `sub("^0*", "", "00000000000000000000000MOP_395954")` returns `"MOP_395954"`, exactly what you were requesting. — r2evans, Apr 08 '19 at 15:30
How can I do this without using any python or R fucntions such as "sub" and "Replace". Use only regex for the whole thing? Is it possible? — Kshitij Yadav, Apr 08 '19 at 15:30
Regex just matches. It doesn't *do* anything with the match. You want to do something, so you need more than just regex. — Gregor Thomas, Apr 08 '19 at 15:31
@Gregor thats fine, how can i match anything except the leading 0's. I actaully want that only — Kshitij Yadav, Apr 08 '19 at 15:32
Khsitij, okay, fair question. Where are you trying to do this? Without R or python or another programming language, you can do it in `notepad` or on a piece of paper ... which is obviously sarcasm and because I don't know more context. — r2evans, Apr 08 '19 at 15:32
@CodelessBugging thats excellent. Please answer this, iI will upvote and close this question. — Kshitij Yadav, Apr 08 '19 at 15:34
@Toto, please read the rest of the comments before closing this as a dupe. The OP specifically asked about doing it without python/R, and while it is not clear to me what that means, it does suggest that more details are needed before knowing that this is a duplicate. — r2evans, Apr 08 '19 at 15:34
@KshitijYadav cool, glad I could help, but seems like I can't answer until the question is no longer flagged as a dupe — codelessbugging, Apr 08 '19 at 15:35
@CodelessBugging i dont think its a duplicate question. how can I un-flag this? Any ideas? — Kshitij Yadav, Apr 08 '19 at 15:37
OK, done. But the comment that they don't use R or Python was said after I closed — Toto, Apr 08 '19 at 15:40
@Toto, thanks for re-opening. For the record, though: *"without using any python or R fucntions"* at 15:30:49Z, your close was at 15:32:26Z. Perhaps it took a minute or so for it to register on the page ... yeah, that happens to me a lot. — r2evans, Apr 08 '19 at 15:46

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 08 '19 at 15:40

2

You can match text after the leading zeros using ([^0].*)

answered Apr 08 '19 at 15:40

codelessbugging

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 08 '19 at 15:53

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Use /[A-Z1-9].*/gi [A-Z1-9] will match any character in A-Z 1-9 essentially not a 0, the dot matches any character and the star matches it 0 or more times. The tags match globally and case insensitive.

I initially attempted a solution similar to @Codelessbugging but was unable to get the site to process it correctly.

Link to this solution
Link to CodelessBugging solution

answered Apr 08 '19 at 15:53

CT Hall

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I think codeless and yours both are right. Since the software I am using does the interpretation one row at a time, it was able to parse it with what codeless presented. – Kshitij Yadav Apr 08 '19 at 15:55

How can I ignore leading zero's in a RegEx capture?

2 Answers2