RE: File name regular expression

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
--
Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.



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