regular expressions again

[ADoozer]

having a stinker of a time writing an expression. ive managed to bodge it to work but i know it can be better.

RE.Pattern = "(Deal|Show|Muck)(Cards|Flop|Turn|River)([\s\S]*?)<Card value=""([\s\S]*?)</Action>"

(values im looking for are DealCards, DealFlop, DealTurn, DealRiver, ShowCards, MuckCards)

now occasionaly MuckCards will not have any data after it, but it is still added because it sees a </Action> later on in the file.

this is an example of data i need to catch

<Action seq="3" type="DealCards" seat="7">
         <Card value="2" suit="Diamonds"/>
         <Card value="2" suit="Spades"/>
      </Action>

<Action seq="14" type="DealFlop">
         <Card value="7" suit="Hearts"/>
         <Card value="6" suit="Hearts"/>
         <Card value="King" suit="Diamonds"/>
      </Action>

<Action seq="26" type="DealRiver">
         <Card value="10" suit="Diamonds"/>
      </Action>

data i dont want to catch

<Action seq="29" type="MuckCards" seat="7"[b]/>[/b]

data my RE pattern is currently catching, which is bad

<Action seq="34" type="MuckCards" seat="4"/>
      <Action seq="35" type="Check" seat="1"/>
      <Action seq="36" type="Check" seat="2"/>
      <Action seq="37" type="DealTurn">
         <Card value="5" suit="Clubs"/>
      </Action>

any help will save my sanity.. thanks in advance

If somethings hard to do, its not worth doing - Homer Simpson

 

[Hypetia]

Try this.
[tt]
re.Pattern = "<Action .*? type=""(Deal|Show|Muck)(Cards|Flop|Turn|River)""[^</]*>([\s\S]*?)<Card value=""([\s\S]*?)</Action>"[/tt]

 

[strongm]

Much as I like the power of Regular Expressions, given that the text appears to be XML would it not be easier to parse it using the XML libraries?

 

[ADoozer]

hypetia.. seems to have done the trick.

strongm.. yes it is XML stored in an SQLite DB. im getting most of the data i need (using DOMDocument and IXMLDOMNodeList). however when i started the project i didnt know the exact syntax, and so to avoid rewriting the hole code i just need to bodge this section.

If somethings hard to do, its not worth doing - Homer Simpson