This is not SQL Server database problem, however, net search has failed
to generate a solution to the problem, I'm trying my luck at this NG
now.
Problem, remove the special character, [ from text.
e.g. text =
"this is [1] and [stuff] and some [2] and hat [3] and dog"
Desired result =
"this is 1 and [stuff] and some 2 and hat 3 and dog"
I know [[:digit:]] would find all the instances of digits inside
brackets such as [1], [2], [3]. However, I don't know how to get rid
of the special characters of [ and ].
Any regular expression expert out there?
Thanks.
DonNickName (dadada@.rock.com) writes:
> This is not SQL Server database problem, however, net search has failed
> to generate a solution to the problem, I'm trying my luck at this NG
> now.
> Problem, remove the special character, [ from text.
> e.g. text =
> "this is [1] and [stuff] and some [2] and hat [3] and dog"
> Desired result =
> "this is 1 and [stuff] and some 2 and hat 3 and dog"
> I know [[:digit:]] would find all the instances of digits inside
> brackets such as [1], [2], [3]. However, I don't know how to get rid
> of the special characters of [ and ].
> Any regular expression expert out there?
Since you did not specify which regular expressions you are using, I'm
taking the liberty to answer with the regexps I know, that is those of
Perl. In Perl you would say:
s/\[([0-9]+)\]/\1/g
The \[ means [, that is \ is an escape charactter. () is for grouping,
and \1 refers back to this paren.
I have only seen glimpses of the regexps in .Net, but it appears to be
similar to Perl. There might be different rules for when you need \
though. In Textpad that I use, I would have to say \( and \)to use parens
for grouping.
--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@.sommarskog.se
Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techin.../2000/books.asp|||> Problem, remove the special character, [ from text.
> e.g. text =
> "this is [1] and [stuff] and some [2] and hat [3] and dog"
> Desired result =
> "this is 1 and [stuff] and some 2 and hat 3 and dog"
Using the Zeus editor:
http://www.zeusedit.com
These are the search and replace regular expresions:
Search: (\[)([0-9]+)(\])
Replace: \2
Note: Zeus is shareware (45 day trial).
Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows|||Jussi,
Thanks for the response, I think your tool seems clever, and yet I'm
trying not to introduce many tools within one project.
Don.|||Erland,
I appreciate your response, unfortunately I'm not using Perl.
Don|||NickName (dadada@.rock.com) writes:
> I appreciate your response, unfortunately I'm not using Perl.
If in you insist on not telling what you use, the responses may not always
be applicable.
Anyway, I hoped that you would be able to translate the Perl stuff to
whatever you are using.
--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@.sommarskog.se
Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techin.../2000/books.asp|||NickName wrote:
> Thanks for the response, I think your tool seems clever, and
> yet I'm trying not to introduce many tools within one project.
The good thing is the regexp's that I posted are just standard
unix style regexp's so they should work with any tool that can
handle these type of regexp's.
Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows
http://www.zeusedit.com|||Shoot, you're tricky, now that you say it's sort of generic, I tried it
and it works nice, thanks.|||Erland,
Jussi's solution solved the problem. You seem a very kind person, if
one day I travel to Sweden and you're available, I would love to buy
you a beer.
Kind regards,
Don Lisql
