Re: How to extract a substring using Regex

On Thu, 2007-08-23 at 19:08 -0700, Postgres User wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Michael Glaesemann <grzm(at)seespotcode(dot)net> wrote:
> >
> > On Aug 23, 2007, at 20:01 , Postgres User wrote:
> >
> > >>> Yes, I read the manual. I think I had a problem because of the
> > >>> special chars (< / >) that I'm trying to search for... Still
> > >>> looking
> > >>> for the right syntax.
> > >>
> > >> Why don't you show us what you've tried and the errors you're
> > >> getting? That way we can help you figure out what you're doing wrong
> > >> rather than just give you an answer.
> > >>
> > >> Michael Glaesemann
> > >
> > > SELECT substring(data_field from '<name>(.)</name>')
> > > FROM myTable
> >
> > Looks like you might want to brush up on regular expressions in
> > general. Your expression will match a single character between the
> > <name> tags. You might want to try something like .+ instead.
> >
> > Michael Glaesemann
>
> You're right, that was a typo, I didn't copy and paste.
> I found the problem, I was using 2 forward slashes instead of a
> backslash + forward slash when pattern matching. The correct regex to
> extract my substring:
>
> substring(data_field from '<name>(.+)<\/name>')

FWIW, I find the following site extremely useful when trying to create
moderately complex regular expressions: http://www.rexv.org.

HTH,

Mark.

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ILande - Open Source Consultancy
http://www.ilande.co.uk