CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregex
orly.sharon
orly.sharon

Reputation: 193

Seeking help writing REGEX in java

I need to write a regex that checks that in the string there is 12 | (pipes) and 13 other words any characters without | pipe ( number letters and special characters). the input for the regex is :

00000003 | 1 | 1 |0 | test name | [email protected] | Street | city | state | zip code | GBR | description | 30

I tried to build it like this: 

([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])+(\|{1})+
([A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\^_`{}~-])

but the regex does not check 12 pipes. in addition, I've tried to build this regex

1) 
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])([\|])
(?:[^|])




2)
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])\|
(?:[^|])


3) (/|{12})

none of them didn't work for me. any advice?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 100

Answers (4)

MonkeyZeus
MonkeyZeus

Reputation: 20737

Something like this?

^([^|]+\|){12}[^|]+$

In English:

Find 12 instances of anything not a pipe followed by a pipe. Then make sure it ends in something which is not a pipe

https://regex101.com/r/R8TqaL/1

Upvotes: 0

mprivat
mprivat

Reputation: 21902

You should use this: ^(?:[^\|]+\|){12}[^\|]+$

So properly escaped as a Java String: String pattern = "^(?:[^\\|]+\\|){12}[^\\|]+$";

This reads like this:

^: From the beginning of the expression

(?:[^\|]+\|): look for a bunch of non-| followed by a | . The (?: thing is for non-capturing groups. It tells the regex engine you don't actually care about the field value, just that it's there. It's an optimization.

{12}: exactly 12 times

[^\|]+: then one last 13th field of non-|

$: And at that point you should reach the end of the expression

Actual example at: https://www.regexplanet.com/share/index.html?share=yyyydfv274d

I'm sure you already know, but for sake of completeness, here are all the regex tokens in Java and their meanings: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html

Upvotes: 1

s_bighead
s_bighead

Reputation: 1092

I've checked this one:

^.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*?\|.*

Regex explained

Upvotes: 0

user557597
user557597

Reputation:

This seems to fit

"^(?:[^|]*\\w[^|]*\\|){12}[^|]*\\w[^|]*$"

https://regex101.com/r/TwYdDV/1

Explained 

 ^                             # BOS
 (?:                           # Cluster       
      [^|]* \w [^|]*                # Exists a word char
      \|                            # Pipe
 ){12}                         # End cluster, do 12 times
 [^|]* \w [^|]*                # Exists a word char
 $                             # EOS

Upvotes: 0

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