Question

I am modifying a file to conform to new standards.
I only learnt RegEx for a week many years ago but never got to use it extensively. Therefore I’m seeking a quick solution here. Any one care to help?

–Updates–
Thanks for all your reply, here are more details to the question:
The following is a snapshot of the file

"Qty"   "Reference" "Part Name" "PCB DECAL" "Manufacturer"  "Description"   "Value"  
"4" "C37 C67-68"    "2.2UF/10V" "C0805" ""  "Capacitor" "2.2UF/10V"  
"2" "CPL1-2"    "CPL"   "CPL-250-200-NOVIA" "Anaren"    ""  "1P510"    
"15"    "M1-15" "HOLE100"   "HOLE100_180"   ""  ""  ""  
"4" "L1-2 L5 L7"    "IND"   "L0603" ""  "MOLDED INDUCTOR, 0.5" PIN SPACING" "2.2nH"  
"9" "R2 R8 R12 R34-35"  "R" "R0603" ""  ""  "0"  

Basically I need to detect all “-” in column 2 that are followed by a number and insert in between the letters that are at the beginning of the word.

Regarding the language, I was actually using Notepad++, thinking the same expressions could at leased by ported to other platforms such as SED if it comes to that.

Answer 1

([A-Za-z]){1,}([0-9]{1,})-([0-9]{1,})

The regex matches:

• The characters A to Z, a to z one or more times (first capture), followed by
• The characters 0 to 9 one or more times (second capture), followed by
• The character -, followed by
• The characters 0 to 9 one or more times (third capture)

Replacement pattern is something like this:

$1$2-$1$3

Example in PHP preg:

$output = preg_replace('/([A-Za-z]){1,}([0-9]{1,})-([0-9]{1,})/', '$1$2-$1$3', $input);