Question

regular expression help

Asked by: andieje

Hi

I have a string that contains a long list of stock codes separated by commas. What i need to do is this:

1. Count the no of stock codes in the list
2. For every 10 stock codes in the list, create a new string containing just those 10 codes. If there were 33 codes in the initial string there would be 3 strings containing 10 codes and 1 string containing 3 codes.
3. Create an array containing the new strings

I can think of many ridiculously convoluted ways of doing this but i would be interested to see a efficient way of doing this.

Thanks in advance
andrea

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Asked On
2008-05-05 at 14:32:29ID23377866
Topic

Microsoft Visual Basic.Net

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: RQuadlingPosted on 2008-05-05 at 14:57:00ID: 21503339

I don't know vb, but here is a pseudo code mechanism.

Declare empty array of strings.
Declare a reference to 1 to indicate which array entry we are using.
Declare a count for the current number of items processed.
loop
 Find position of comma.
 If the current count is > 0 add a comma to the array entry.
 Copy everything to the left of the comma to the array entry.
 Truncate the data string to the next character after the comma.
 Add 1 to the current count.
 If the current count is 10, reset the count to 0 and add 1 to the array reference
 If there is nothing left to check, drop out of the loop.
End loop

 

by: ericwong27Posted on 2008-05-05 at 19:01:56ID: 21504303

Using Split can be resolved the problem

        Dim content As String = "Stock1,Stock2,Stock3,Stock4,Stock5,Stock6,Stock7,Stock8,Stock9,Stock10,"
        content += "Stock11,Stock12,Stock13,Stock14,Stock15,Stock16,Stock17,Stock18,Stock19,Stock20,"
        content += "Stock21,Stock22,Stock23,Stock24,Stock25,Stock26,Stock27,Stock28,Stock29,Stock30,"
        content += "Stock31,Stock32,Stock33"
 
        Dim fields As String() = content.Split(","c)
 
        ' Count the no of stock codes in the list
        Dim count As Integer = fields.Length
 
        'For every 10 stock codes in the list, create a new string containing just those 10 codes. 
        'If there were 33 codes in the initial string there would be 3 strings containing 10 codes 
        'and 1 string containing 3 codes.
        Dim subStringCount As Double = Math.Ceiling(count / 10) - 1
        Dim subString(subStringCount) As String
 
        For i As Integer = 0 To count - 1
            Dim index = Math.Ceiling((i + 1) / 10) - 1
            subString(index) += fields(i) + ","c
        Next
 
        'Create an array containing the new strings
        Dim subArray(subStringCount) As Array
        For i As Integer = 0 To subStringCount
            subArray(i) = subString(i).TrimEnd(","c).Split(","c)
        Next
                                              
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by: RQuadlingPosted on 2008-05-05 at 19:07:27ID: 21504316

My only criticism of ericwong27's code is that it requires converting the string to an array, and then into some strings in an array.

But it should be faster if the split doesn't take too long.

I suppose if you went with my "code", you could just maintain an offset in the original string as the new start position for each "find the next ," step. That would need you read from the original string and populate the appropriate array entry and only have a few integers to keep track of.

 

by: ericwong27Posted on 2008-05-05 at 20:38:41ID: 21504605

another option by using regular expression

 Dim content As String = "Stock1,Stock2,Stock3,Stock4,Stock5,Stock6,Stock7,Stock8,Stock9,Stock10,"
        content += "Stock11,Stock12,Stock13,Stock14,Stock15,Stock16,Stock17,Stock18,Stock19,Stock20,"
        content += "Stock21,Stock22,Stock23,Stock24,Stock25,Stock26,Stock27,Stock28,Stock29,Stock30,"
        content += "Stock31,Stock32,Stock33"
 
        ' Count the no of stock codes in the list
        Dim count As Integer = content.Split(","c).Length
 
        'For every 10 stock codes in the list, create a new string containing just those 10 codes. 
        'If there were 33 codes in the initial string there would be 3 strings containing 10 codes 
        'and 1 string containing 3 codes.
        'Create an array containing the new strings
 
        Dim lResult As New ArrayList
        Dim lPattern As String = "([\w-_]+,[\w-_]+,[\w-_]+,[\w-_]+,[\w-_]+,[\w-_]+,[\w-_]+,[\w-_]+\,[\w-_]+,[\w-_]+,)"
        For Each item As String In Regex.Split(content, lPattern)
            If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(item) Then lResult.Add(item.TrimEnd(","c))
        Next

                                              
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by: andiejePosted on 2008-05-15 at 12:37:55ID: 21577251

thanks for your help, sorry for the delay in replying

 

by: andiejePosted on 2008-05-30 at 12:22:13ID: 31455257

thanks

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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