Download - The Bastards Book of Regular Expressions

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Lookarounds 113Selecting a delimiter in Excel’s Text Import Wizard4. After that, we have a text file in spreadsheet-manipulable format:The text as a spreadsheetExercise: Make CSV data from an address listSo turning CSV-delimited text to spreadsheet data is easy. but what if we want to get turn nondelimitedtext into a spreadsheet? We would have to convert that text into a delimited format. Andthis is where regexes come in.
Lookarounds 114Given this list of cities and postal codes: TODO New York, NY 10006Convert it to this CSV format:TODO“Hey,” you might say, “there’s already a comma in that data.” True, but it’s just typical punctuation.If we were to open this list in Excel, we would end up with:TODO:So we need to use a simple regex to at least separate the state from the zipcode.AnswerFind (.+?), ([A-Z]{2}) (\d{5})Replace \1,\2,\3Exercise: More complex addressesBelieve it or not, the easily-fixed scenario above is one that I’ve seen keep people from makingperfectly usable, explorable data out of text.However, for most kinds of text lists, the cleanup is a little more sophisticated than one extra comma.Here’s an example in which we have to deal with street names and addresses:50 Fifth Ave. New York, NY 10012100 Ninth Ave. Brooklyn, NY 114169 Houston St. Juneau, AK 999992800 Springfield Rd. Omaha, NE 55555Change to:50,Fifth Ave.,New York,NY,10012100,Ninth Ave.,Brooklyn,NY,114169,Houston St.,Juneau,AK,999992800,Springfield Rd.,Omaha,NE,55555AnswerThis is simply breaking each part of the line into its own separate pattern:1. Street number: consecutive digits at the beginning of the line2. Street name: A combination of word characters and spaces until a literal period is reached.
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The Bastards Book ofRegular Express
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CONTENTSOptionality and alternation
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CONTENTSSwitching visualizations (T
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Regular Expressions are for Everyon
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Regular Expressions are for Everyon
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Getting Started6
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Finding a proper text editor 8Notep
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Finding a proper text editor 10Edit
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Finding a proper text editor 12Text
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Finding a proper text editor 14does
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Finding a proper text editor 16Yest
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Finding a proper text editor 18A do
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A better Find-and-Replace 20The lim
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A better Find-and-Replace 22Using R
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Your first regex 24helloThe Find-an
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Your first regex 26The regex syntax
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Your first regex 28Double-bounded
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Your first regex 30AnswerFind \bcat
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Removing emptinessIt’s funny how
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Removing emptiness 34Now let’s do
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Removing emptiness 36…as opposed
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Removing emptiness 38Replacement in
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Match one-or-more with the plus sig
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Match zero-or-more with the star si
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Specific and limited repetition 501
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Specific and limited repetition 52E
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Specific and limited repetition 54C
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Anchors: A way to trim emptinessIn
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Anchors: A way to trim emptiness 58
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Anchors: A way to trim emptiness 60
Page 69 and 70: Anchors: A way to trim emptiness 62
Page 71 and 72: Matching any letter, any number 64A
Page 73 and 74: Matching any letter, any number 66W
Page 75 and 76: Matching any letter, any number 68[
Page 77 and 78: Matching any letter, any number 70R
Page 79 and 80: Matching any letter, any number 72F
Page 81 and 82: Matching any letter, any number 74A
Page 83 and 84: Negative character sets 76$1,200.00
Page 85 and 86: Negative character sets 78\W+Exerci
Page 87 and 88: Capture, Reuse 80Find (ba)+Matches
Page 89 and 90: Capture, Reuse 82.- then the 1st ba
Page 91 and 92: Capture, Reuse 84In English We are
Page 93 and 94: Capture, Reuse 86ApplesOraclesOrang
Page 95 and 96: Capture, Reuse 8805-14-8912-03-9803
Page 97 and 98: Capture, Reuse 90Mary asked: "What
Page 99 and 100: Optionality and alternationThe two
Page 101 and 102: Optionality and alternation 94Answe
Page 103 and 104: Optionality and alternation 96Studi
Page 105 and 106: Optionality and alternation 98You m
Page 107 and 108: Laziness and greediness 100Being to
Page 109 and 110: Laziness and greediness 102Replace
Page 111 and 112: Laziness and greediness 104With the
Page 113 and 114: Lookarounds 106cat(?=s)- will match
Page 115 and 116: Lookarounds 108`(?
Page 117 and 118: Lookarounds 110ExerciseGiven the fo
Page 119: Lookarounds 112City,CountryAlbuquer
Page 123 and 124: Lookarounds 116100,J.D. Salinger Av
Page 125 and 126: Lookarounds 1186,300|Apples|New Yor
Page 127 and 128: Lookarounds 120^(\d+) Record ID (\w
Page 129 and 130: Lookarounds 122d. Remove all asides
Page 131 and 132: From Data to HTML (TODO)This chapte
Page 133 and 134: From Data to HTML (TODO) 126Turning
Page 135 and 136: The ExercisesI’ve never been one
Page 137 and 138: Data Cleaning with the Stars 130LOR
Page 139 and 140: Data Cleaning with the Stars 132[GM
Page 141 and 142: Finding needles in haystacks (TODO)
Page 143 and 144: Changing phone format (TODO)Todo: T
Page 145 and 146: Changing phone format (TODO) 138Exe
Page 147 and 148: Changing phone format (TODO) 140Ans
Page 149 and 150: Changing phone format (TODO) 142`1-
Page 151 and 152: Changing phone format (TODO) 144(\d
Page 153 and 154: Dating, Associated Press Style (TOD
Page 161 and 162: Sorting a police blotter 154Sloppy
Page 163 and 164: Sorting a police blotter 156I used
Page 165 and 166: Converting XML to tab-delimited dat
Page 167 and 168: Converting XML to tab-delimited dat
Page 169 and 170: Cleaning up Microsoft Word HTML(TOD
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Cleaning up OCR Text (TODO)Image sc
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Moving forwardThank you for taking
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