How can I modify this regex to match all three cases?

Question

I want to test if a method appears in a header file. These are the three cases I have:

void aMethod(params ...)
//void aMethod(params
// void aMethod(params
  ^ can have any number of spaces here

Here's what I have so far:

re.search("(?<!\/\/)\s*void aMethod",buffer)

Buf this will only match the first case, and the second. How could I tweak it to have it match the third too?

EDIT:sorry, but I didn't express myself correctly. I only want to match if not within a comment. So sorry.

What do you want to achieve with the negative look behind `(?<!\/\/)` it implies that you want not to match on comment lines, but that would mean it should only match the first case. — stema, Jun 22 '11 at 08:21
In my test the regex matches the first and the third case, like expected. Geo, are you sure, it matches the first and second case? — Leif, Jun 22 '11 at 08:25
Oh damn! I didn't express myself clearly. I only wanted to match if not within a comment. I will ask another question. — Geo, Jun 22 '11 at 08:25
If you want to ignore comments, I suggest to "preprocess" your file to ignore/remove comments as a first step. If you process the file line by line, just check if it is a comment line before searching for your method. See also pygments' clexer: http://pygments.org/docs/api/#lexers — Udi, Jun 22 '11 at 08:39

Leif · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-22T08:33:26.967

7

EDIT: Ok, after your edit, Geo, it is this:

^(?<!\/\/)\s*void aMethod

edited Jun 22 '11 at 08:33

answered Jun 22 '11 at 08:19

Leif

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 22 '11 at 08:24

If you simply want to find all appearances for 'void aMethod(params' then you can use the following:

a = """void aMethod(params ...)
//void aMethod(params
// void aMethod(params
  ^ can have any number of spaces here"""
from re import findall
findall(r'\bvoid aMethod\b', a)

OR:

findall(r'(?:\/\/)?[ ]*void aMethod', a)

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 22 '11 at 08:19

1

Try this regexp.

(\/\/)?\s*void aMethod

answered Jun 22 '11 at 08:19

Timofey Stolbov

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 22 '11 at 08:24

1

For the three options: (?:\/\/)?\s*void aMethod

answered Jun 22 '11 at 08:24

Udi

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How can I modify this regex to match all three cases?

4 Answers4

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