Parentheses in Block Brackets in RegEx

Question

I need a RegEx that matches the following:

(whatever)   3.4  Temp
(whatever)   7.8  Name
(whatever)  10.0  Other Name

Basically, it has to match whatever in the beginning, and then either two spaces, two digits, a dot and a digit or three spaces, one digit, a dot, and a digit, followed by two spaces and whatever.

This is easily matched with this RegEx:

.*?  [\s|\d]\d\.\d  .*?

However, I want to extract the decimal number and whatever's after it using a backreference. I was trying

.*?  [\s(\d\.\d)|(\d\d\.\d)]  (.*?)

However, referring to it with \1,\2 doesn't work, I think because the parentheses I'm referring to are in the optional square brackets with the '|' symbol. Is there a solution?

`|` does not mean "or" in a character class. I don't think you should be using a character class here at all... — Matt Ball, Aug 20 '14 at 20:01
@MattBall Jeez I'm an idiot. It's amazing what you just look over. Thanks! — Alex Beals, Aug 20 '14 at 20:03

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 20 '14 at 20:01

1

Sure, just pull the space out of the character class.

.*?\s+([\d.]+)

However since \d is literally [0123456789.], just drop the character class. And since .*? will match those leading spaces too, drop the \s too!

.*?(\d+)

answered Aug 20 '14 at 20:01

Adam Smith

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Parentheses in Block Brackets in RegEx

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