Date:         Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:36:49 -0500
Reply-To:     evilpettingzoo97@AOL.COM
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Ken Borowiak <evilpettingzoo97@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Regex pattern to match *-*-* ?
Comments: To: jack.pistons@GMAIL.COM
In-Reply-To:  <1164742806.822235.185900@j72g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

  Jack & All,

 The masking of '-' can be skipped if it appears first in the character class, or second if preceeded by the '^' (i.e. a negated character class). Otherwise, it must be masked, as it is used to indicate a range.

 Ken

 -----Original Message-----
 From: jack.pistons@GMAIL.COM
 To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
 Sent: Tue, 28 Nov 2006 2:40 PM
 Subject: Re: Regex pattern to match *-*-* ?

  Hi, Richard:

Try the following Perl regex:

   [^\- ]+(-[^\-]+)+

The hyphen has meaning within the character class and needs to be
escaped.

- Jack

Richard A. DeVenezia wrote:
> Trying to figure out a single regex pattern that will indicate data is of
> the form:
>     something dash something
>     with any number of trailing dash somethings
>
> Tried
>     [^-]+(-[^-]+)+@
>
> but it is not affirming a match against data like
>     a-b-c
>     xx-yy-zz
>     2-3
>     a-b-c-d-e-f
>
> Any ideas?
>
> --
> Richard A. DeVenezia

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