Parsing CREATE TABLE sql with regex

Question

I'm doing a simple language sql with regex, and i'm parsing the sentence CREATE TABLE, but does not work. I use this:

reti = regcomp(&regex,  "CREATE TABLE [a-zA-Z]\\((.*)\\)", REG_EXTENDED);

It's something simple, i just do it to learn... What is wrong with the regex?

"Does not work" is not a useful problem description. Please provide sample input, and expected and actual output. — IMSoP
– IMSoP, Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 20:50

LSerni · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-17 22:24:42Z

1

Apart from only working on one letter SQL tables, you are either omitting whitespaces before the open parentheses or, depending on the SQL and regex engine/string syntax, over-escaping your expression parentheses.

Check:

[A-Za-z]+\\s*

if it doesn't work and the plus sign is not recognized,

[A-Za-z][A-Za-z]*\\s*

and whether it's \\\\( or just \\( (it should be the latter. But better be sure).

This supports names such as Antinoo and cUsToMeRs, but not Invoices_New or Suppliers2014. You might want to add numbers and underscores to your regex. Since table names probably won't start with numbers, you'll want

[A-Z_a-z][A-Z_a-z0-9]*\\s*\\(([^;]*)\\)

edited Dec 17, 2014 at 22:24

answered Dec 17, 2014 at 20:38

LSerni

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2 Comments

user3476778 Over a year ago

Thanks for commeting. When i use "(" or "\s", the compiler gives me an error: warning: unknown escape sequence: '\s' [enabled by default]. therefore i use double "\\"

LSerni Over a year ago

My bad. You did say you were using C. So \\s is correct, and \\( should be too (I seem to remember some scenario where I needed \\\\( but I can no longer recall why and where. Just in case, checking is easy).

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