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
--

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



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