RE: File name regular expression -- RPG400-L

Mark,

I did escape the period. That was pretty clear from my research. I'm still a little fuzzy on some of the other characters though and exactly what the differences are. That will probably get better with experience.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mark Murphy/STAR BASE Consulting Inc.
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 4:12 PM
To: RPG programming on the IBM i / System i
Cc: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx; rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: File name regular expression

Be careful not to discount Bruce's reply. That period needs to be escaped, or it will match any character before the xml at the end. Also you may want to use the + instead of the * so that you have at least one alpha or number following the underscore, and before the .xml.

Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote on 05/03/2010 03:29:21 PM:

From: <Rick.Chevalier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 05/03/2010 03:35 PM
Subject: RE: File name regular expression Sent by:
rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Thanks Dennis. That was it. I kept the original expression and just
inserted a * after [A-Z0-9].

I have a question (or two) about your expression.

1) I re-read the wikipedia site and I get the * after [A-Z0-9], but I
don't get the * at the end. Shouldn't that be $ to look for .xml at
the end of the name?

2) If the parenthesis are removed does ^ and $ still match the pfi_
and .xml strings respectively or just a single character?

Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [

mailto:rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx

] On Behalf Of Dennis Lovelady
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 1:59 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
--

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