Regular Expressions in C++ using Boost

Question

So far.. I have this test string:

Hello {John|Paul|Cindy}, hows {david}?

and my expression is:

(\{\w+\})

However, it only returns david. I want to be able to grab John, Paul, and Cindy. There would only be 0 or 2 vertical bars. any ideas?

Thanks

\w matches a normal charakter. But | is none. Therefore it matches only {david}. {John|Paul|Cindy} is not matched because it contains symbols | that are not contained in \w. But I am not sure what you want to achive? — Haatschii, Jul 03 '12 at 23:21

tomasz · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-04T14:38:49.060

2

If it's not some kind of competition, I would simply use two regular expressions:

{[\w|]+} to grab each pair of curly brackets along with its content, then, on each result, \w+ to extract words.

You can't go simpler using just one regex.

edited Jul 04 '12 at 14:38

answered Jul 03 '12 at 23:46

tomasz

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 03 '12 at 23:28

1

If only 0 or 2 vertical bars:

(\{\w+\}|\{\w+\|\w+\|\w+\})

For 0 or more:

(\{\w+(\|\w+)*\})

answered Jul 03 '12 at 23:28

Arpegius

your first answer only grabs the first name – unwise guy Jul 03 '12 at 23:30
1

i'm using http://www.rubular.com/ if you want to check the string above with your expression. – unwise guy Jul 03 '12 at 23:30
Yeah i make a mistake. Anyway better to edit comment, then to post twice. – Arpegius Jul 03 '12 at 23:32
Here's another version for 0, 1 or 2: `(\{\w+\|{0,1}\w+\|{0,1}\w+\})` (Maybe you don't want to pick up when its only 1 vertical bar though). – Jesse Good Jul 03 '12 at 23:40

2 Answers2