Question

So I’ve been working on a little project to write a syntax highlighter for a game’s scripting language. It’s all gone off without a hitch, except for one part: the numbers.

Take these lines for example

(5:42) Set database entry {healthpoints2} to the value 100.

(5:140) Move the user to position (29,40) on the map.

I want to highlight that 100 on the end, without highlighting the (5:42) or the 2 in the braces. The numbers won’t always be in the same place, and there won’t always only be one number.

I basically need a regexp to say:

“Match any numbers that aren’t anywhere between {} and don’t match the (#:#) pattern.”

I’ve been at this for a day and a half now and I’m pulling out my hair trying to figure it out. Help with this would be greatly appreciated!
I’ve already looked at regular-expressions.info, and tried playing around with RegexBuddy, but i’m just not getting it :c

Edit: By request, here’s some more lines copied right from the script editor.

(0:7) When somebody moves into position (**10** fhejwkfhwjekf **20**,

(0:20) When somebody rolls exactly **10** on **2** dice of **6** sides,

(0:31) When somebody says {...},

(3:3) within the diamond (**5**,**10**) - **20** //// **25**,

(3:14) in a line starting at (#, #) and going # more spaces northeast.

(5:10) play sound # to everyone who can see (#,#).

(5:14) move the user to (#,#) if there's nobody already there.

(5:272) set message ~msg to be the portion of message ~msg from position # to position #.

(5:302) take variable %var and add # to it.

(5:600) set database entry {...} about the user to #.

(5:601) set database entry {...} about the user named {...} to #.

Answer 1

You might kick yourself when you see this solution…

Assuming this desired number will always be used in a sentence, it should always have a space preceding it.

$pattern = '/ [0-9]+/s';

If the preceding space isn’t always present, let me know and I’ll update the answer.

---

Here’s the updated regex to match the 2 examples in your question:

$pattern = '/[^:{}0-9]([0-9,]+)[^:{}0-9]/s';

---

3nd update to account for your question revisions:

$pattern = '/[^:{}0-9a-z#]([0-9]+[, ]?[0-9]*)[^:{}0-9a-z#]/s';

So you don’t highlight the number in things like

{update 29 testing}

you might want to pre strip the braces, like so:

$pattern = '/[^:{}0-9a-z#]([0-9]+[, ]?[0-9]*)[^:{}0-9a-z#]/s';
$str = '(0:7) Hello {update 29 testing} 123 Rodger alpha charlie 99';
$tmp_str = preg_replace('/{[^}]+}/s', '', $str);
preg_match($pattern, $tmp_str, $matches);