[xquery-talk] An analyze-string stumper

Patrick Durusau patrick at durusau.net
Mon Apr 23 11:50:42 PDT 2018


Joe,

Forgive the length but I'm likely to bump my head on this issue in the
future, so a fuller than necessary explanation:

Started with the simplest regex that would capture the parens:

1. fn:analyze-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) ", "\(\d.*\)")

1. Result: <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 </fn:non-match>
  <fn:match>(UAR) President Gamal Abdel Nasser, urging him to seize the
unique opportunity offered by the Jarring mission to achieve peace. (79,
171)</fn:match>
  <fn:non-match> </fn:non-match>
</fn:analyze-string-result>

OK, so what do we know about the desired matches? Digits plus (, ) with
no spaces. Yes?

2. fn:analyze-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) ", "\(\d, \d+\)")

So I match parens plus digits, ", " (comma plus whitespace), digits plus
paren.

2. Result: <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, 171)</fn:match>
  <fn:non-match> </fn:non-match>
</fn:analyze-string-result>

I need to split the two numbers and what better to do that than
alternative matching?

3. fn:analyze-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) ", "\(\d+ | \d+\)")

3. Result: <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. (79,</fn:non-match>
  <fn:match> 171)</fn:match>
  <fn:non-match> </fn:non-match>
</fn:analyze-string-result>

Your probably already laughing because you see my mistake, which I
correct in #4:

4. fn:analyze-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) ", "\(\d+|\d+\)")

4. Result: <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:match>
  <fn:non-match>,</fn:non-match>
  <fn:match> 171)</fn:match>
  <fn:non-match> </fn:non-match>
</fn:analyze-string-result>

The error was here: "\(\d+ | \d+\)", which would only match (any-digit
plus a white space, whereas the number in question was followed by *no
space* and a comma.

Know thy data!

Examples created on BaseX. BTW, I started from known good examples in
XQuery Functions 3.1, verified that they worked and then created the
search strings.

Hope this helps!

Patrick















On 04/23/2018 12:22 PM, Joe Wicentowski wrote:
> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> talk at x-query.com
> http://x-query.com/mailman/listinfo/talk

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick at durusau.net
Technical Advisory Board, OASIS (TAB)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net
Homepage: http://www.durusau.net
Twitter: patrickDurusau 

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