CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Thomas
Thomas

Reputation: 5998

Removing numbers and separators from a numbered list

I am often dealing with list that users submit to a web site. A list usually looks like:

  1. Item
  2. Item

The pattern is usually a number followed by the separator (it can be "-" or "\" or "." or any other typical separators). There can be one or more spaces between the number and separator and between the separator and the list item. Sometimes there is no number in front of the list item and in that case nothing needs to be done. Sometimes there is a number but no separator.

Is there a way to take out the number and/or the separator all together using regular expression?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2813

Answers (2)

Maggie
Maggie

Reputation: 6093

(?=\d*\s*[-\\.]?\s*)([a-zA-Z\s*]+)

You can view the answer here: RegExr

Explanation:

\d*- matches 0 or more occurrence digits
\s* - matches 0 or more occurrence whitespace after the number
[-\\.]? - matches 0 or 1 occurrence of '-' '.' '\'
\s* - matches 0 or more occurrence whitespace after that
([a-zA-Z\s*]+) -matches any characters after that (items you need to extract)

Upvotes: 0

Felix Kling
Felix Kling

Reputation: 816442

This will match numbers and separators and the beginning of a line:

^\d+\s*[-\\.)]?\s+

Use it to replace it with an empty strings (depends on the language you are using).

You might have to add more characters to the character class, to match possible separators.

Good source to learn regular expressions: http://www.regular-expressions.info/

Upvotes: 9

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