twitter regular expressions

Question

I need 3 different regular expressions

• one that finds at the beginning of the string a 'D' and a space then a name, so 'D patrickgates hello there' would return 'D patrickgates', or if all possible would return just 'patrickgates'
• one that will find the @ sign and a name together anywhere in the string so '@patrickgates hello, world' would work and return '@patrickgates' or if at all possible would return just 'patrickgates'
• one that will find 'RT' and a space and then '@' and the username at the beginning of the string so 'RT @patrickgates' would work

if returning just the username and also being true isn't possible with one regex, then I could use one to match to, and one that will delete the 'D' or the '@' or the 'RT', thank you

(fyi, i'm using AS3 to do this)

Answer 1

public function convertTwitterMsg (o:Object):void {
   trace('New Tweet: ' + o);
   var original:String = o.title;
   _tweet = original.replace(/(^|\s)@(\w+)/g, "$1@<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/$2\">$2</a>");
   _final = _tweet.replace(/(^|\s)#(\w+)/g, "$1#<a href=\"http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23$2\">$2</a>");
   ta.htmlText = _final;
}

ta should be the id of your mx:TextArea, you could also use spark, but it changed the way you style your text in spark. _tweet is a String

I copied pasted the function, use at your own convenience.

Answer 2

1. D patrickgates use ^D (\w+) to capture 'patrickgates'
2. @patrickgates hello, world use ^@(\w+) to capture 'patrickgates'
3. RT @patrickgates use `^RT @(\w+) to capture 'patrickgates'

If you want a single regex to capture patrickgates from all three of your examples:

^(?:D |@|RT @)(\w+)