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Character repetition is one of the more powerful features of regular expressions. Learn how to match repeated characters.
Code Snippet
Here's the serial numbers used in the video for easy copy and pasting:
E4763GHC
7896TOB3P
L0003
Practice
Copy both the Match and the Exclude set of test strings from each exercise below into regex101. Using what you've learned so far, create a regular expression that will match all of the strings in the Match set and exclude the ones in the Exclude set.
1 )
Match:
8 pieces
7 piece
6 pieces
5 pieces
4 pieces
Exclude:
A piece
A 12345
2 )
Match:
8 pieces
7 piece
6 pieces
5 pieces
4 pieces
2 pie slices
Exclude:
A piece
A 12345
3 )
Match:
1234
5678
84753
78930
Exclude:
abcde
abcde
power
bat!
4 )
Match:
123abc
333cats
821_Plants
769___
Exclude:
454!_Minutes
12statues
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Often when constructing
a regular expression,
0:00
you'll need to a way to
handle repeating characters.
0:03
For example, say you wanted to merge
several spaces at the end of a line or
0:06
number 10 or greater.
0:11
In other words, numbers with two or
more numerical characters,
0:14
two regex characters we'll often use
are the asterisk and the plus symbol.
0:19
These two symbols can both
match more than one character.
0:26
However, while the asterisk
can match zero or
0:30
more characters,
the plus matches at least one character.
0:34
For example, let's say we wanted
to match toy boat or toy car,
0:40
both start with toy but ends with
the different sequence of characters.
0:45
Or start the reject with toy and
0:50
I can put a word character to
match any letter that follows.
0:53
This will match the c in car or
the b in boat, but
0:59
to match the rest of either string,
I can use an asterisk.
1:03
This asterisk is saying
I want to match zero or
1:08
more word characters,
notice how toy is also matched.
1:12
That's because there are zero word
characters after the y in toy,
1:18
to exclude toy from the matches,
we can use a + instead.
1:23
The word character followed by a plus
matches one or more word characters.
1:28
In other words we're saying there has
to be at least one word character
1:35
that follows toy, and
toy is now excluded from the matches.
1:41
There are also times when you want to
specify the exact number of characters,
1:46
like three digits in
a phone's area code or
1:52
the last four digits of a serial number.
1:55
You can be specific about how many
repetitions you want to accept,
1:58
by using curly braces you can
enter the number of repetitions.
2:03
Here the example matches three
repetitions, by placing a comma
2:08
after the three any repetition of three or
greater will be matched.
2:13
Putting a number after the comma will
buy into the number of repetitions.
2:20
In this example, repetitions between 3 and
5 will be matched,
2:26
let's see these in use,
let's clear out these toy examples.
2:31
Let's match a US social
security number now.
2:39
Social security numbers are nine digits
and are formatted into three groupings.
2:42
The first has three digits, the second
group has two, and the last has four.
2:47
They're separated by hyphens,
I'll enter a couple numbers now.
2:52
To avoid actually using real
social security numbers,
2:59
I'm going to put zeros as the first group.
3:02
Now I'll start to build up
the regular expression.
3:12
I'll enter the digit character to begin
with, I can repeat this with a plus.
3:17
Which we can see will freely match
all the groupings of numerals below.
3:23
Let's limit this to match
exactly three characters by
3:28
replacing the + with curly braces,
putting a 3 in between.
3:32
Now we're matching only the three
numerical sequences the parser can find.
3:38
If I put a hyphen after, you can see
3:43
that there are only two occurrences
of three digits followed by a hyphen.
3:47
Now we can specify the rest
of the pattern by putting \d,
3:53
with 2 repetitions, and a hyphen, and
3:59
then \d with 4 repetitions and that's it.
4:04
Now if I delete a digit from one of these
numbers, the pattern fails to match.
4:11
Let's see how to relax the number
of repetitions will accept.
4:17
Suppose there's a serial number we want to
match that will always be between five and
4:21
nine characters.
4:26
And those characters can
only be letters or numbers.
4:27
I'll just paste a few examples that
I made up that follow this pattern.
4:32
You can type your own if you want, or
copy and paste from the teacher's notes.
4:38
Because we want to match letters and
numbers, I could use the word character.
4:42
And then I'll follow it with curly braces,
5, 9.
4:50
Now if I erase the 3 from
the end of the last number,
4:57
there are four characters and
the serial number won't match.
5:02
If I add a character to the second one,
5:07
there will be 10 characters, and
I'll only get a partial match.
5:10
If I then erase the 9 from the red jacks,
5:17
Any serial number five characters or
more will be matched.
5:22
I'll just type a few more characters, so
5:28
you can see that they'll
be matched as well.
5:30
Get some practice with these in
the exercises in the teachers notes.
5:36
Next, let's look at how to match
anything except a specific character.
5:40
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