How to exclude a symbol within [ ] with RegEx

Question

I am using PHP preg_match_all, and this is what I can get so far....

[A-Za-z+\W]+\s[\d]

The only problem is that I need the \W to not be a ".

So I have tried:

[A-Za-z+[^\dA-Za-z"]\s?]+\s[\d]


[A-Za-z+]\s?+[^A-Za-z\d"]?\s[\d]

among other things, and it is just failing and I really can't figure out why.

EDIT:

Here is the entire RegEx;

([A-Z][a-z]+\s){1,5}\s?[^a-zA-Z\d\s:,.\'\"]\s?
[A-Za-z+\W]+\s[\d]{1,2}\s[A-Z][a-z]+\s[\d]{4}

I split it into two line, the second line begins with what I posted.

Patterns trying to match:

    India – Adulterated Tea Powder Seized 18 April 2011
    India – Importer of Haldiram’s Petha Sweet Cubes Issuing Voluntary Recall 26 April 2011
    India – Undeclared Gluten Found in Sweets by Canadian Authorities 27 April 2011
    India – Adulteration Found in Edible Oils 28 April 2011
    India – Viral Disease Affects Chili Crop in Goa 28 April 2011
NOT ---->   Chili – India: Goa”. 8 April 2011
    Ivory Coast – Potential Cocoa Quality Decline despite Sufficient Surplus 11 April 2011
    Japan – Sanuki Kanzume Co. and Failure to Comply with FDA Standards 27 April 2011
    Madagascar – Toxic Sardines 14 April 2011
    Madagascar – Update: Toxic Sardines 26 April 2011

If you could show us what pattern you are trying to match, that might be easier. — dlev, May 19 '11 at 14:33
What are you trying to match exactly? By the way, square brackets [], if unescaped, delimit character classes and cannot be nested as in your regex [A-Za-z+[^\dA-Za-z"]\s?]+\s[\d] — Paolo Stefan, May 19 '11 at 14:34
See [open source regexbuddy alternatives](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/89718/is-there-anything-like-regexbuddy-in-the-open-source-world) for some tools — mario, May 19 '11 at 14:36
I have been using regexbuddy, but they are all failing. Because it is meant for JavaScript, right? Going to work... will comment in 15 minutes. — Ryan Ward Valverde, May 19 '11 at 14:38
This might be easier if you also gave some examples of the string you want to match. — Sandeep Shetty, May 19 '11 at 14:39

Jonathan Kuhn · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-19T15:07:22.990

the pattern you are showing matches all letters and non word characters. The only thing not included in the pattern are numbers and you also want to not match the double quote.

[^\d\"_]+\s\d

Edit:

I could be wrong, but from the sample input, it appears you are just trying to match all lines that don't have a double quote. If so something like this is much easier and I've even grouped the date separate from the rest of the string. If you don't need to group the sting/date then just remove all the parenthesis.

<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$str = "    India - Adulterated Tea Powder Seized 18 April 2011
    India - Importer of Haldiram’s Petha Sweet Cubes Issuing Voluntary Recall 26 April 2011
    India - Undeclared Gluten Found in Sweets by Canadian Authorities 27 April 2011
    India - Adulteration Found in Edible Oils 28 April 2011
    India - Viral Disease Affects Chili Crop in Goa 28 April 2011
    Chili - India: Goa\". 8 April 2011
    Ivory Coast - Potential Cocoa Quality Decline despite Sufficient Surplus 11 April 2011
    Japan - Sanuki Kanzume Co. and Failure to Comply with FDA Standards 27 April 2011
    Madagascar - Toxic Sardines 14 April 2011
    Madagascar - Update: Toxic Sardines 26 April 2011";
preg_match_all("/^([^\"]+?)(\d?\d\s[a-z]+\s\d{4})$/im", $str, $m);
echo '<pre>'.print_r($m, true).'</pre>';
?>

you should add underscore `_` because it is part of `\w` – Toto May 19 '11 at 14:46 — Toto, May 19 '11 at 14:46

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 19 '11 at 14:39

0

If you know that all lines with either be acceptable or contain a " (and therefore be unacceptable) then [^\"]+ should be fine.

answered May 19 '11 at 14:39

dlev

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Wouldn't it be easier just to look for one or more quotation marks at all, and then invert the match result (i.e., consider the line unacceptable if the match is successful)? – Platinum Azure May 19 '11 at 14:53

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered May 19 '11 at 14:33

-1

Try this:

[A-Za-z+\W^\"]+\s[\d]

answered May 19 '11 at 14:33

Jeroen

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The `^` will only invert the charcter class if it's the first symbol. Otherwise it will be treated *as is*, and will have no special meaning other than matching an `^`. – Yoshi May 19 '11 at 14:37
Something like this then: `[[^\"]A-Za-z+\W]+\s[\d]` ? – Jeroen May 19 '11 at 14:38
2

you can't sub group character classes. – Jonathan Kuhn May 19 '11 at 14:40

How to exclude a symbol within [ ] with RegEx

EDIT:

3 Answers3