CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#regexevaluation
Sash
Sash

Reputation: 1144

regular expression not matching in c# but matching in regexr

I found a citation parsing regular expression here: http://linklens.blogspot.com.au/2009/04/citation-parsing-regular-expression.html and it's working fine when testing it at http://www.regexr.com, however it's not working when attempting to use Regex.Match in c#.

This is the expression (with escaped \"") - evaluated from c# and re-tested in regexr.

/([^e][^d][^s][^\.]\s|\d+\.?\s|^)([A-Z][a-z]{1,},?((\s[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))(\s?[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))*))(\s?(,|and|&|,\s?and)?\s?([A-Z][a-z]{1,},?((\s[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))(\s?[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))*)))*\s*(\(?\d\d\d\d\)?\.?)?\s*(\""|“)?((([A-Za-z:,\r\n]{2,}\s?){3,}))\.?(\""|”)?/g

Would anybody familiar with regular expressions notice anything that may not be compatible with c# in this fairly complex expression?

Edit:

Link to regexr example with some text citations: http://regexr.com/3a232

        var myMatches = @"/([^e][^d][^s][^\.]\s|\d+\.?\s|^)([A-Z][a-z]{1,},?((\s[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))(\s?[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))*))(\s?(,|and|&|,\s?and)?\s?([A-Z][a-z]{1,},?((\s[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))(\s?[A-Z](\.|,|\.,))*)))*\s*(\(?\d\d\d\d\)?\.?)?\s*(""|“)?((([A-Za-z:,\r\n]{2,}\s?){3,}))\.?(""|”)?/g";
        var matches = Regex.Matches(TestApp.Properties.Resources.Citation, myMatches);
        Console.WriteLine(matches.Count);

Returns 0 matches.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 358

Answers (1)

Guffa
Guffa

Reputation: 700152

You are escaping the quotation marks wrong. It's never escaped with \"".

In a regular string a quotation mark is escaped with \".

In a @ delimited string a quotation mark is escaped with "".

You should remove the / from the beginning of the string and the /g from the end of the string. They are not part of the pattern, that is the syntax for a regex literal (which doesn't exist in C# syntax by the way).

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions