Question

I am trying to create a RegEx expression that will successfully parse the following line:

"57" "testing123" 82 16 # 13 26 blah blah

What I want is to be able to do is identify the numbers in the line. Currently, what I’m using is this:

[0-9]+

which parses fine. However, where it gets tricky is if the number is in quotes, like “57” is or like “testing123” is, I do not want it to match.

In addition to that, anything after the hash sign (the ‘#”), I do not want to match anything at all after the hash sign.

So in this example, the matches I should be getting are “82” and “16”. Nothing else should match.

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It should be easier for you to build 3 different regexes, and then create the logic that combines them:

1. Check, whether the string has #, and ignore everything after it.
2. Check, for all the matches of “\d+”, and ignore all of them
3. Check everything that’s left, whether it matches [0-9]+