Regex Replace Help

  • Thread starter Thread starter barry
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B

barry

Hi

I have a files which contains
&
&
&quote;

I want to replace & with & , but not & or &quote;

Will someone please help with the Regular Expression.

TIA
Barry
 
strange, no one has replied

looks like i have crossed the limit of asking question on the same topic. I
the some limit maybe (10 or 15 per topic)
 
Hi Barry,

Actually I wanted to play around with this for you but just haven't gotten
around to it. (And, btw, I don't recall any previous posts from you on this
subject.)

Part of my response to you, the part I can provide without actually playing
with a regex, is the following. Regular Expressions are extremely useful.
If you do any programming the effort you put into learning regular
expressions will be worth it. Several of us here use Expresso (from
UltraPico) and recommend it. I just became aware of something similar
called Regular Expression Workbench available from MSDN. I've installed it
but have not yet played with it.

I'll try to play with it later today but no promises.

Bob
 
Thanks for your reply

Imagine the following string
string str = "The Quick Black&Fox & Jumped Over &quote; The & Lazy Dog";

should be

string str = "The Quick Black&Fox & Jumped Over &quote; The & Lazy
Dog";

This is a problem with a larger .xml file in which xx&xx is creating a
problems in IE

In fact in have just spent over 50 minutes and managed to get some results
like this

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"\b\s*(?=&[^&|&quote;| & ])\b", "&",
RegexOptions.None);

And last but not the least i collect all answers posted to my Regex queries
for later use.
 
Well ... I did know before I looked at this that I was far from an expert in
regular expressions. But I know that even better now! But I think that I
did eventually find a solution.

I began by ignoring the replace aspect of the problem and tried to just find
a regular expression that would find the right ampersands. At first I did
not see how to find an "&" NOT followed by a specific STRING. But after
some research in the great Balena book I learned that I could use what is
called a "zero-width negative look-ahead assertion". The syntax for one of
those is "(?!subexpr)". So using this expression
(?<desiredamp>&(?!amp;))
I was able to find ampersands except for those followed by "amp;". Great!
I thought I was on my way and leapt, without sufficient thought, to
(?<desiredamp>&((?!amp;)|(?!quote;)))
but that catches all ampersands. It catches &amp; because that's an & not
followed by "quote;". And catches &quote; because that's an & not followed
by "amp;".

After more thought I came up with
(?<desiredamp>&(?!(amp;)|(quote;)))
which I think finds the ampersands which you want to find.

Another plug for Expresso, it was absolutely invaluable in researching this!

The expression above does find the & in "The & Lazy Dog". But if you don't
want that one I am sure you can see how to alter the expression to eliminate
it. I also did not worry about the replace aspect of the problem, I'm sure
you don't need help with that.

Good Luck, Bob

barry said:
Thanks for your reply

Imagine the following string
string str = "The Quick Black&Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The & Lazy
Dog";

should be

string str = "The Quick Black&amp;Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The & Lazy
Dog";

This is a problem with a larger .xml file in which xx&xx is creating a
problems in IE

In fact in have just spent over 50 minutes and managed to get some results
like this

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"\b\s*(?=&[^&amp;|&quote;| & ])\b", "&amp;",
RegexOptions.None);

And last but not the least i collect all answers posted to my Regex
queries for later use.








eBob.com said:
Hi Barry,

Actually I wanted to play around with this for you but just haven't
gotten around to it. (And, btw, I don't recall any previous posts from
you on this subject.)

Part of my response to you, the part I can provide without actually
playing with a regex, is the following. Regular Expressions are
extremely useful. If you do any programming the effort you put into
learning regular expressions will be worth it. Several of us here use
Expresso (from UltraPico) and recommend it. I just became aware of
something similar called Regular Expression Workbench available from
MSDN. I've installed it but have not yet played with it.

I'll try to play with it later today but no promises.

Bob
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Hello Barry,

Let's try to wriete out the pattern you're looking for.

You're specifically looking for a pattern that consists of an &, not followed
by any alphanumeric characters and a ;. Now if you write it out like that,
it becomes quite simple:

&(?![a-z0-9]+;)

That's it... Now, replace those with &amp; and you're done.

Jesse

Thanks for your reply

Imagine the following string
string str = "The Quick Black&Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The & Lazy
Dog";
should be

string str = "The Quick Black&amp;Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The &
Lazy Dog";

This is a problem with a larger .xml file in which xx&xx is creating
a problems in IE

In fact in have just spent over 50 minutes and managed to get some
results like this

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"\b\s*(?=&[^&amp;|&quote;| & ])\b", "&amp;",
RegexOptions.None);

And last but not the least i collect all answers posted to my Regex
queries for later use.

Hi Barry,

Actually I wanted to play around with this for you but just haven't
gotten around to it. (And, btw, I don't recall any previous posts
from you on this subject.)

Part of my response to you, the part I can provide without actually
playing with a regex, is the following. Regular Expressions are
extremely useful. If you do any programming the effort you put into
learning regular expressions will be worth it. Several of us here
use Expresso (from UltraPico) and recommend it. I just became aware
of something similar called Regular Expression Workbench available
from MSDN. I've installed it but have not yet played with it.

I'll try to play with it later today but no promises.

Bob
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
well i work on freelancer sites and one buyer had posted 3 xml files which
hr/she could not read in IE, i tried them myself it would fail on some lines
with IE giving the following error message

A semi colon character was expected. Error processing resource
'file:///C:/3Xmls/canales.es_9159529468.xml'. Line 16590, P...

once the & was replacedwith &amp; it would move further and show a error on
another line.

The buyer wanted the errors corrected in the entire files, it was possible
to do a find/replace (carefully) in a text editor, i have no intention of
hacking and do not have the time to do so.

If you want i can send you one of those files (i do not have the permission
to do so, but that does not matter).
following is one such problem node, link is the problem node

<video>
<idvideo>Publicidad</idvideo>
<nombre>Publicidad</nombre>
<descripcion>Publicidad</descripcion>
<url>http://www.xxxxxxxxx.tv/xxx/redir.php?pf=zoneid__18;n__ae371c90;cb__786592291</url> <link>http://www.xxxxxxxxx.tv/ads/redir.php?clk=1&pf=zoneid__18;n__ae371c90;cb__786592291</link> <category>preroll</category> <thumbnail></thumbnail></video>"Tigger" <[email protected]> wrote in messagenews:D[email protected]...> "barry" <[email protected]> wrote in messagenews:%[email protected]...>>>> Thanks for your reply>>>> Imagine the following string>> string str = "The Quick Black&Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The & LazyDog";>>>> should be>>>> string str = "The Quick Black&amp;Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The &Lazy Dog";>>>> This is a problem with a larger .xml file in which xx&xx is creating aproblems in IE>>>> In fact in have just spent over 50 minutes and managed to get someresults like this>>>> str = Regex.Replace(str, @"\b\s*(?=&[^&amp;|&quote;| & ])\b", "&amp;",RegexOptions.None);>>>> And last but not the least i collect all answers posted to my Regexqueries for later use.>>>> Is this a case of correcting badly encoded data? Is the source dataexpected to be correctly encoded html/xml?>> It seems encoding certain "&"s while igonoring others is hacking around aproblem instead of sorting out why the source data is incorrect.>> Also, in your example you encode one "&" at "Black&Fox" while ignoringanother at "The & Lazy". So what are the rules?>> --> Tigger> http://www.mccreath.org.uk>
 
Hello Jesse

Will this work on a entire XML file (it has over 20,000 lines) and there are
many lines with such problems. The acutal job is long over, i am only trying
to understand regex in such cases.

Barry


Jesse Houwing said:
Hello Barry,

Let's try to wriete out the pattern you're looking for.

You're specifically looking for a pattern that consists of an &, not
followed by any alphanumeric characters and a ;. Now if you write it out
like that, it becomes quite simple:

&(?![a-z0-9]+;)

That's it... Now, replace those with &amp; and you're done.

Jesse

Thanks for your reply

Imagine the following string
string str = "The Quick Black&Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The & Lazy
Dog";
should be

string str = "The Quick Black&amp;Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The &
Lazy Dog";

This is a problem with a larger .xml file in which xx&xx is creating
a problems in IE

In fact in have just spent over 50 minutes and managed to get some
results like this

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"\b\s*(?=&[^&amp;|&quote;| & ])\b", "&amp;",
RegexOptions.None);

And last but not the least i collect all answers posted to my Regex
queries for later use.

Hi Barry,

Actually I wanted to play around with this for you but just haven't
gotten around to it. (And, btw, I don't recall any previous posts
from you on this subject.)

Part of my response to you, the part I can provide without actually
playing with a regex, is the following. Regular Expressions are
extremely useful. If you do any programming the effort you put into
learning regular expressions will be worth it. Several of us here
use Expresso (from UltraPico) and recommend it. I just became aware
of something similar called Regular Expression Workbench available
from MSDN. I've installed it but have not yet played with it.

I'll try to play with it later today but no promises.

Bob


strange, no one has replied

looks like i have crossed the limit of asking question on the same
topic. I the some limit maybe (10 or 15 per topic)


Hi

I have a files which contains
&
&amp;
&quote;
I want to replace & with &amp; , but not &amp; or &quote;

Will someone please help with the Regular Expression.

TIA
Barry
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Jesse

It does the replace in the entire xml file.

Barry


barry said:
Hello Jesse

Will this work on a entire XML file (it has over 20,000 lines) and there
are many lines with such problems. The acutal job is long over, i am only
trying to understand regex in such cases.

Barry


Jesse Houwing said:
Hello Barry,

Let's try to wriete out the pattern you're looking for.

You're specifically looking for a pattern that consists of an &, not
followed by any alphanumeric characters and a ;. Now if you write it out
like that, it becomes quite simple:

&(?![a-z0-9]+;)

That's it... Now, replace those with &amp; and you're done.

Jesse

Thanks for your reply

Imagine the following string
string str = "The Quick Black&Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The & Lazy
Dog";
should be

string str = "The Quick Black&amp;Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The &
Lazy Dog";

This is a problem with a larger .xml file in which xx&xx is creating
a problems in IE

In fact in have just spent over 50 minutes and managed to get some
results like this

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"\b\s*(?=&[^&amp;|&quote;| & ])\b", "&amp;",
RegexOptions.None);

And last but not the least i collect all answers posted to my Regex
queries for later use.


Hi Barry,

Actually I wanted to play around with this for you but just haven't
gotten around to it. (And, btw, I don't recall any previous posts
from you on this subject.)

Part of my response to you, the part I can provide without actually
playing with a regex, is the following. Regular Expressions are
extremely useful. If you do any programming the effort you put into
learning regular expressions will be worth it. Several of us here
use Expresso (from UltraPico) and recommend it. I just became aware
of something similar called Regular Expression Workbench available
from MSDN. I've installed it but have not yet played with it.

I'll try to play with it later today but no promises.

Bob


strange, no one has replied

looks like i have crossed the limit of asking question on the same
topic. I the some limit maybe (10 or 15 per topic)


Hi

I have a files which contains
&
&amp;
&quote;
I want to replace & with &amp; , but not &amp; or &quote;

Will someone please help with the Regular Expression.

TIA
Barry
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Hello Barry,
Thanks Jesse

It does the replace in the entire xml file.
Click to expand...

You're welcome :)

Jesse

Barry

Hello Jesse

Will this work on a entire XML file (it has over 20,000 lines) and
there are many lines with such problems. The acutal job is long over,
i am only trying to understand regex in such cases.

Barry

Hello Barry,

Let's try to wriete out the pattern you're looking for.

You're specifically looking for a pattern that consists of an &, not
followed by any alphanumeric characters and a ;. Now if you write it
out like that, it becomes quite simple:

&(?![a-z0-9]+;)

That's it... Now, replace those with &amp; and you're done.

Jesse

Thanks for your reply

Imagine the following string
string str = "The Quick Black&Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The &
Lazy
Dog";
should be
string str = "The Quick Black&amp;Fox &amp; Jumped Over &quote; The
& Lazy Dog";

This is a problem with a larger .xml file in which xx&xx is
creating a problems in IE

In fact in have just spent over 50 minutes and managed to get some
results like this

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"\b\s*(?=&[^&amp;|&quote;| & ])\b",
"&amp;", RegexOptions.None);

And last but not the least i collect all answers posted to my Regex
queries for later use.


Hi Barry,

Actually I wanted to play around with this for you but just
haven't gotten around to it. (And, btw, I don't recall any
previous posts from you on this subject.)

Part of my response to you, the part I can provide without
actually playing with a regex, is the following. Regular
Expressions are extremely useful. If you do any programming the
effort you put into learning regular expressions will be worth it.
Several of us here use Expresso (from UltraPico) and recommend it.
I just became aware of something similar called Regular Expression
Workbench available from MSDN. I've installed it but have not yet
played with it.

I'll try to play with it later today but no promises.

Bob

strange, no one has replied

looks like i have crossed the limit of asking question on the
same topic. I the some limit maybe (10 or 15 per topic)

Hi

I have a files which contains
&
&amp;
&quote;
I want to replace & with &amp; , but not &amp; or &quote;
Will someone please help with the Regular Expression.

TIA
Barry
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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