Help with a regular expression 1

[pkailas]

I'm using VB and I'm trying to match certain criteria using regex.

I want a match on "payment terms" or "terms" but NOT on "freight terms".

Everything I've done picks up "freight terms" if I allow "terms".

Please help.

Thanks

Paul

_______
I love small animals, especially with a good brown gravy....

 

[MikeBronner]

Here's a great resource for regular expressions:
Regular Expressions Library:

http://regexlib.com/default.aspx

What's happening in your case is that the RegEx is only matching 'terms' and not the entire clause. To get arround this precede your RegEx with ^ and end it with $. The carat specifies the beginning of a line, and the $ specifies the end of a line. This forces your the match to go against the entire phrase, and not just pick out 'terms'.

So, your regex should look like this:

"^(terms)|(payment terms)$

Take Care,
Mike

 

[pkailas]

I can force the complete phrase no problem. the thing is that "terms" by itself is allowed, but it CANNOT be preceded by "freight", but it CAN be preceded by "payment"

_______
I love small animals, especially with a good brown gravy....

 

[MikeBronner]

The above RegEx should address that.

Take Care,
Mike

 

[pkailas]

Yes that does work. Sorry I didn't test it first.

Is there a way to make it case insensitive as well?

_______
I love small animals, especially with a good brown gravy....

 

[MikeBronner]

If you use PERL style RegEx (that include a beginning and ending /) then do this:

/^(terms)|(payment terms)$/i

.

If that doesn't work in your situation, then make sure the variable you are testing has been converted to lowercase.

Take Care,
Mike

 

[pkailas]

well, I'm using a crappy application that has regex built in and it doesn't seem to support that. I'll just have to enter all possible iterations.

One more question. How to I tell this to ignore spaces?

ie. " Terms" causes a match

_______
I love small animals, especially with a good brown gravy....

 

[MikeBronner]

Try this. I added a little shortcur for ignoring capital first letters, as well as the optional space in front:

^( )?([tT]erms)|([pP]ayment [tT]erms)$

Take Care,
Mike

 

[pkailas]

almost there!

Only thing, when I tell it to ignore the space, then "Fright Terms" causes a match.

is there a way to "trim" the line before we test it?

This has to be done as a regex expression though

_______
I love small animals, especially with a good brown gravy....

 

[MikeBronner]

I'm not quite sure how you are implementing this. Can you post the code you are using to evaluate the RegEx?

Take Care,
Mike