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Development Tools Introduction to Regular Expressions Regular Expressions Matching Specific Characters

I can't get #4 of the teacher's notes practice examples to work :) any help?

I can get "ladybug" to match with: [fl]ad[iy] ?[rb]ug!?

and "fading rug!" to match by just adding "ng" like this: [fl]ad[iy]ng ?[rb]ug!?

But I can't get both and I don't know why!

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,184 Points

The first regex doesn't allow "ng", and the second one requires it.

You could make both the "n" and the "g" optional. For example:

[fl]ad[iy]n?g? ?[br]ug!?

Thank you!

This is how I made it look for all the test strings in one Regular Expression.

Regular Expression:

[lhf]a[dz][yi]n?g? ?s?[blr]ugs?!?

Test String:

ladybug
ladybugs
lady bugs
lazy bug
lazy lug
lazy slug
hazy slug
fading rug!

I just added a question mark after each character and it matched l?a?d?y?b?u?g?f?a?d?i?n?g? ?r?u?g?!?

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,184 Points

But that will match thousands of other strings as well. I think the idea is to match only the test set and reject other strings.

If you wanted to indiscriminately match anything, you can simply use :point_right: .*