Question

I need a regexp to match something like this,

‘text’ | ‘text’ | … | ‘text'(~text) = ‘text’ | ‘text’ | … | ‘text’

I just want to divide it up into two sections, the part on the left of the equals sign and the part on the right. Any of the ‘text’ entries can have “=” between the ‘ characters though. I was thinking of trying to match an even number of ‘s followed by a =, but I’m not sure how to match an even number of something.. Also note I don’t know how many entries on either side there could be. A couple examples,

’51NL9637X33′ | ‘ISL6262ACRZ-T’ | ‘QFN'(~51NL9637X33) = ’51NL9637X33’ | ‘ISL6262ACRZ-T’ | ‘INTERSIL’ | ‘QFN7SQ-HT1_P49’ | ‘()’

Should extract,
’51NL9637X33′ | ‘ISL6262ACRZ-T’ | ‘QFN'(~51NL9637X33)
and,
’51NL9637X33’ | ‘ISL6262ACRZ-T’ | ‘INTERSIL’ | ‘QFN7SQ-HT1_P49’ | ‘()’

‘227637’ | ‘SMTU2032_1’ | ‘SKT W/BAT'(~227637) = ‘227637’ | ‘SMTU2032_1’ | ‘RENATA’ | ‘SKT28_5X16_1-HT5_4_P2’ | ‘()’ :SPECIAL_A =’BAT_CR2032′, PART_NUM_A=’202649′

Should extract,
‘227637’ | ‘SMTU2032_1’ | ‘SKT W/BAT'(~227637)
and,
‘227637’ | ‘SMTU2032_1’ | ‘RENATA’ | ‘SKT28_5X16_1-HT5_4_P2’ | ‘()’ :SPECIAL_A =’BAT_CR2032′, PART_NUM_A=’202649′

Also note the little tilda bit at the end of the first section is optional, so I can’t just look for that.

Answer 1

Actually I wouldn’t use a regex for that at all. Assuming your language has a split operation, I’d first split on the | character to get a list of:

'51NL9637X33'
'ISL6262ACRZ-T'
'QFN'(~51NL9637X33) = '51NL9637X33'
'ISL6262ACRZ-T'
'INTERSIL'
'QFN7SQ-HT1_P49'
'()'

Then I’d split each of them on the = character to get the key and (optional) value:

'51NL9637X33'           <null>
'ISL6262ACRZ-T'         <null>
'QFN'(~51NL9637X33)     '51NL9637X33'
'ISL6262ACRZ-T'         <null>
'INTERSIL'              <null>
'QFN7SQ-HT1_P49'        <null>
'()'                    <null>

You haven’t specified why you think a regex is the right tool for the job but most modern languages also have a split capability and regexes aren’t necessarily the answer to every requirement.