[xquery-talk] An analyze-string stumper

[Joe Wicentowski]

Hi all,

I have encountered an unexpected challenge constructing a regex for a
pattern I am looking for.  I am looking for numbers in parentheses.  For
example, in the following string:

  "On February 13, 1968, Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent a
    message to Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban calling upon Israel to
    endorse openly Resolution 242, and on May 13 President Johnson sent a
    letter to United Arab Republic (UAR) President Gamal Abdel Nasser,
    urging him to seize the unique opportunity offered by the Jarring
    mission to achieve peace. (79, 171)"

... I would like to match "79" and "171" (but not "UAR" or "13" or
"1968").  I have been trying to construct a regex for use with
analyze-string to capture this pattern, but I have not been successful.  I
have tried the following:

  analyze-string($string, "(?:\()(?:(\d+)(?:, )?)+(?:\))")

In other words, there are these 3 components:

  1. (?:\() a non-capturing group consisting of an open parens, followed by
  2. (?:(\d+)(?:, )?)+ one or more non-capturing groups consisting of (a
number followed by an optional, non-matching comma-and-space), followed by
  3. (?:\)) a non-capturing group consisting of a close parens

I was expecting to get the following output:

  <fn:analyze-string-result xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions
">
    <fn:non-match>On February 13, 1968, Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent a
    message to Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban calling upon Israel to
    endorse openly Resolution 242, and on May 13 President Johnson sent a
    letter to United Arab Republic (UAR) President Gamal Abdel Nasser,
    urging him to seize the unique opportunity offered by the Jarring
    mission to achieve peace. </fn:non-match>
    <fn:match>(<fn:group nr="1">79</fn:group>,
      <fn:group nr="1">171</fn:group>)</fn:match>
  </fn:analyze-string-result>

However, the actual result is that the first number ("79") is skipped, and
only the 2nd number ("171") is captured:

  <fn:analyze-string-result xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions
">
    <fn:non-match>On February 13, 1968, Secretary of State Dean Rusk sent a
    message to Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban calling upon Israel to
    endorse openly Resolution 242, and on May 13 President Johnson sent a
    letter to United Arab Republic (UAR) President Gamal Abdel Nasser,
    urging him to seize the unique opportunity offered by the Jarring
    mission to achieve peace. </fn:non-match>
    <fn:match>(79,
      <fn:group nr="1">171</fn:group>)</fn:match>
  </fn:analyze-string-result>

What am I missing?  Can anyone suggest a regex that is able to capture both
numbers inside the parentheses?  Or do I need to make a two-pass run
through this, finding parenthetical text with a first analyze-string like
"\(.+\)" and then looking inside its matches with a second analyze-string
like "(\d+)(?:, )?"?

Thanks,
Joe
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