Question

Can some recommend a regex to return the value when an item is selected as well as unselected as seen below.

<option value="32_1002_ACCT1001" selected="selected">ACCT1001 -- Accounting 1a</option>
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1002">ACCT1002 -- Accounting 1b</option>

My regex currently works only for the unselected option seen below.

(<option value="([^"]+)">([^<]+)<\/option>)

EDIT:

Thanks for the great responses guys, however I should have been a bit more detailed and specific.

I am using it in a screen-scraper extractor pattern as follows:

<option value="~@COURSE_ID@~">~@COURSE_CODE@~ -- ~@COURSE_NAME@~</option>

where ~@COURSE_ID@~ specifies the following regex query:

([^"]+)

Works fine for all option tags EXCEPT the first one which is already selected.

I am testing out your suggestions at the moment, but if anyone wants to jump in with a sure fire solution that would be great.

I’m really struggling with this one, nothing seems to be working!

Answer 1

I agree with Kobi but if you really want to use regex here is a solution in perl :

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>) {
    print $_;
    if (/^(<option value="([^"]+).*?(?:selected="selected")?.*)$/) {
        print "match\t value=$2\n";
    } else {
        print "NOT match\n";
    }
}

__DATA__
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1001" selected="selected">ACCT1001 -- Accounting 1a</option>
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1002">ACCT1002 -- Accounting 1b</option>

output :

<option value="32_1002_ACCT1001" selected="selected">ACCT1001 -- Accounting 1a</option>
match    value=32_1002_ACCT1001
<option value="32_1002_ACCT1002">ACCT1002 -- Accounting 1b</option>
match    value=32_1002_ACCT1002