Reg ex

[loll]

Hi , I am trying to figur eout a regex and I think my brain is going to explode 🙂

I am trying to figur eout a reg ex to search words:

eg. I am looking for words with:

0 or 1 E's
0 or 1 A's
0,1 or 2 D's

and no other letter is in the word

so that it should match
DEAD
DAD

but not DEED or HELLO

I thought it would be somethign like [D{0,1}E{0,1}A{0,1} - [BCFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]]

but I cannot seem to get it to work.

Any Ideas?

Any Help would be greatly appreciated

[bpat1434]

try:
^{[D]{0,2}[A]{0,1}[E]{0,1}$}

[loll]

thank you fo r that, I think that is almost what I am after.

Only problem with it judging by the results I got was that I think it is looking for

0-2D's followed by 0-1E's followed by 0-1 A;s

So it isnt matching DEAD it seems I guess because the last D isnt getting counted?

So I am wondering how I would make it so the 2D'sc ould be anywhere in the string rather than only testing it for it being att he beginning?

Does putting square brackets around do that

like [^{[d]{0,2}[E]{0,1}[A]{0,1}$]}

or something along those lines?

Thanks for your help, it is greatly appreciated.

[bpat1434]

NO, if you only want to make sure a string only has a certain amount of characters:

<?php

/** Function totalStr() taken from User Notes on php.net **/
function totalStr($haystack, $needle,$i = 0)
{
	$hay = strtolower($haystack);
	$ndl = strtolower($needle);

  while(strpos($hay,$ndl) !== false) {
      $hay = substr($hay, (strpos($hay,$ndl) + 1));
      $i++;
  }
  return $i;
}

function proper_string($str)
{
	if(strlen($str)>4)
	{
		// It's past our max strlen... (2) Ds, (1) A, (1) E ( 2+1+1 = 4 )
		echo 'Too many characters!!!';
	}
	else if(strlen($str)==0 || empty($str))
	{
		echo 'Too few characters!!';
	}
	else
	{
		if(totalStr($str, 'd')<3)
		{
			if(totalStr($str, 'e')<2)
			{
				if(totalStr($str, 'a')<2)
				{
					echo 'Valid!';
				}
				else
				{
					echo "Too many A's";
				}
			}
			else
			{
				echo "Too many E's";
			}
		}
		else
		{
			echo "Too many D's";
		}
	}
}

proper_string('Deed');
echo ' || ';
proper_string('Dead');
echo ' || ';
proper_string('');

?>

[jazz_snob]

loll wrote:

Hi , I am trying to figur eout a regex and I think my brain is going to explode 🙂

I am trying to figur eout a reg ex to search words:

eg. I am looking for words with:

0 or 1 E's
0 or 1 A's
0,1 or 2 D's

and no other letter is in the word

so that it should match
DEAD
DAD

but not DEED or HELLO

I thought it would be somethign like [D{0,1}E{0,1}A{0,1} - [BCFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]]

but I cannot seem to get it to work.

Any Ideas?

Any Help would be greatly appreciated

(scratches head...) Doesn't HELLO contain 0 or 1 E's???

[Weedpacket]

But "HELLO" contains letters other than E, A, or D (there's a clause to that effect).

What I want to know is why "DEED" shouldn't match. (Oh, I get it now, "0 or 1" means 1 is the maximum.)

To count the characters, I'd look at using [man]count_chars[/man]. And if the number of Ds, E,s and As is less than the length of the string, then other characters must be in there.

[jazz_snob]

Weedpacket wrote:

But "HELLO" contains letters other than E, A, or D (there's a clause to that effect).

What I want to know is why "DEED" shouldn't match.

I would guess the 0 or 1 E's requirement.

[bpat1434]

i couldn't figure regex to do it, but wouldn't my function(s) above prove usefull and satisfy his requirement(s)?