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I have a very long array of data, and I need to quickly whizz through it and make sure that none of the names are longer than 22 characters. I understand that I could truncate it on the display side, but I would rather tackle this with a proper solution, of just removing them :)

This is my sample

$profiles[257] = array('name'=>'FedupKissingFrogs', 'age'=>27, 'sex'=>'F', 'location'=>'XXXXXXXXXX'); $profiles[260] = array('name'=>'Lil_Greta_90', 'age'=>20, 'sex'=>'F', 'location'=>'XXXXXXXXXX'); $profiles[262] = array('name'=>'lOOkfOrme86', 'age'=>24, 'sex'=>'F', 'location'=>'XXXXXXXXXX'); $profiles[259] = array('name'=>'youvefoundME', 'age'=>21, 'sex'=>'F', 'location'=>'XXXXXXXXXX');

And here is the regex that I have come up with so far, which doesn't seem to work at all

'[A-Za-z]{20,40}'

My plan is that I can use the regex to mark the lines and then I can delete them from within my IDE. There is no programming allowed ;)

-- Edit --

Thanks for all the replies! The idea behind this was a quick and automated way to just scan a flat PHP file containing an array to see if all the names where shorter than 22 characters, as a name longer than that will break the layout, and I've been asked to remove them. I wanted to just search in my IDE and remove the lines.

Matching the characters isn't important as such, any characters are allowable, even space, \ / ~ and * etc. I'm looking more to match length of the string but contained in the =>'$name' container.

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6
  • What language/framework are you using? Surely there's something built-in that will allow you to test a string's length without resorting to a regex? Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 12:25
  • @Luke: it doesn't seem to be just string length issue. Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 12:26
  • Why {20,40} if you want strings of length <= 22? Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 12:26
  • @SilentGhost: The question says "make sure that none of the names are longer than 22 characters" which sounds like a string length issue to me, although the question is a bit vague. David should clarify the requirements. Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 12:29
  • @Luke: yes and regex shows that OP's checking for specific characters. Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 12:30

4 Answers 4

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56

This will match "At least 22 any characters"

.{22,}
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4 Comments

So as soon as the file gets 22 character long or longer, then this will match... the whole file.
Why? did you try this? It should match line-by-line
+1 Contrary to Lazarus' solution, this works just fine.
This would be the best answer
29

The regex would be:

/'name'=>'[^']{23,}?'/i

This will match any line with a 'name' that is 23 characters or longer.

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1 Comment

Bingo! Thanks, I shall save this somewhere special for future use :)
4

This regex will match a string longer than 22 chars

/.{23,}/
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1 Comment

So as soon as the file gets 22 character long or longer, then this will match... the whole file.
2

I couldn't resist using the good ol' strlen.

foreach ($profiles as $id => $data) { if (strlen($data['name']) >= 22) unset($profiles[$id]); }
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2 Comments

I'm not processing the file, it's flat. Therefore it's not possible to parse the array using PHP. I'm looking for a regex solution to allow me to apply a similar technique in the future :)
regex is better way instead of fucntion

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