RegEx - Match Numbers of Variable Length

Question

I'm trying to parse a document that has reference numbers littered throughout it.

Text text text {4:2} more incredible text {4:3} much later on {222:115} and yet some more text.

The references will always be wrapped in brackets, and there will always be a colon between the two. I wrote an expression to find them.

{[0-9]:[0-9]}

However, this obviously fails the moment you come across a two or three digit number, and I'm having trouble figuring out what that should be. There won't ever be more than 3 digits {999:999} is the maximum size to deal with.

Anybody have an idea of a proper expression for handling this?

genesis · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-13 19:08:22Z

195

{[0-9]+:[0-9]+}

try adding plus(es)

answered Sep 13, 2011 at 19:08

genesis

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Lily Ballard · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-13 19:09:06Z

What regex engine are you using? Most of them will support the following expression:

\{\d+:\d+\}

The \d is actually shorthand for [0-9], but the important part is the addition of + which means "one or more".

CanSpice · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-13 19:08:36Z

Try this:

{[0-9]{1,3}:[0-9]{1,3}}

The {1,3} means "match between 1 and 3 of the preceding characters".

Andrew Clark · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-13 19:08:57Z

You can specify how many times you want the previous item to match by using {min,max}.

{[0-9]{1,3}:[0-9]{1,3}}

Also, you can use \d for digits instead of [0-9] for most regex flavors:

{\d{1,3}:\d{1,3}}

You may also want to consider escaping the outer { and }, just to make it clear that they are not part of a repetition definition.

No please don't do it with most regex flavors, unless you love non-european digits: fileformat.info/info/unicode/category/Nd/list.htm

CJ42 · Accepted Answer · 2024-11-05 12:58:27Z

0

You could use this:

{[0-9]+:[0-9]+}

or the shorthand version \d which matches any number from 0 to 9

{d+:d+}

answered Nov 5, 2024 at 12:58

CJ42

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2 Comments

ruud Over a year ago

Isn't this exactly what the other, highly upvoted answers suggest? Explain what is different, or else risk this post to be deleted.

CJ42 Feb 22 at 18:57

It is the same as the highly upvoted answer indeed, with the addition of the shorthand version with d

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