RE: File name regular expression

Oops. That's ^pfi_[A-Z0-9]*.xml$ (I forgot the underscore).

On your question of $ and end-of-string - If your filename ended with
xml<space> then this would not match. Or if it ended with xmls or
xml<anything> But if your filename ends with .xml then this will match.
Note that it will also match if your filename is pfi_Zxml (note absence of
digits and absence of decimal). The period in the expression above is not
looking for a period character. It is looking for any character. If you
wanted only digits, and if you wanted to require a period before XML, your
expression might look like:
^pfi_[0-9]+\.xml$


Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel."
-- Will Kommen

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Lovelady [mailto:iseries@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 2:59 PM
To: 'RPG programming on the IBM i / System i'
Subject: RE: File name regular expression

I am attempting to match a file name pattern to file names read from

an

IFS directory. What I want is the pattern pfi_nnnn.xml. The files I
want will begin with 'pfi_', and end with '.xml'. Currently there

are

10 digits in between but I wanted to be able to handle varying

numbers.

My expression compiles ok but it doesn't match the file names. Doing
more research on the web makes me think I'm pretty close but hasn't
given me clear direction about the use of the '^' and '$' symbols for
matching the beginning and end of a string. In particular, the end

of

a string. I am attempting to match '.xml' using (.xml)$. My reading
has me wondering if $ only matches the last character and not

multiple

characters. Hopefully someone on the list can help me out with this.
I am posting my current expression below.


^(pfi_)[A-Z0-9](.xml)$

You're so close!

I would do ^pfi[A-Z0-9]*.xml*. There's no advantage that I see so your
parentheses.

(It's the missing splat that's killing you now.)

Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.