Regex Python filtering a list of concatenated strings

Question

I am struggling with a regular expression. It is supposed to match only those strings that are a list of 3 words separated by |.

A word may contain any character (no newline etc., of course) but |

Examples:

word01|wörd|wä4rd # only this should be matched
word04|würd|wä4rd|of
word02|wörd|wä4rd|off|j
word01|wörd

I'd like to match those that have exactly 2 |. A simple count function could do it, but that is not available in my case. So I need a regular expression.

This obviously does not do the trick:

^[^\|]+\|[^\|]+\|+[^\|]$

What's the correct regular expression? What's wrong with my approach?

Toto · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-09 12:37:49Z

2

You have misplaced the last + sign, instead of:

^[^\|]+\|[^\|]+\|+[^\|]$

use

^[^\|]+\|[^\|]+\|[^\|]+$
//               ^____^

answered Jan 9, 2014 at 12:37

Toto

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4 Comments

sphere Over a year ago

[^\|] matches any character except pipe and backslash, there is no escaping needed for the pipe in that case.

Toto Over a year ago

@sphere: I agree that | doesn't need to be escaped, but [\|] doesn't match \ or |, it should be [\\|] to match \ .

sphere Over a year ago

I agree. Interesting that it seems to have no difference if [^\|] or [^|] is used.

Xiphias Over a year ago

Yes, I misplaced that. What a foolish mistake.

sphere · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-09 12:39:54Z

2

Correct would be: '^[^|]+\|[^|]+\|[^|]+$'

answered Jan 9, 2014 at 12:39

sphere

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Comments

Achrome · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-09 12:41:18Z

1

You can simply do this

^([^|]+\|){2}[^|]+$

answered Jan 9, 2014 at 12:41

Achrome

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