perl: REGEX help

I think this will do what you want.  I changed the geo portion slightly to do better checking based on the example - if other geo cases are valid, you can change it back - the only critical change to that portion was adding + after [a-z].  Most of your problem was due to anchoring the regex to the end of the string ($) but not giving full string matching in the regex (I prefer full validation so changed the match rather than remove the end-of-string anchor).

for my $metaKey (sort keys $metaHash){
  next if($metaKey =~ m/(exceptions|list/);
  if ($metaKey =~ m{^(?:[A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+(?:[0-9]+|\.[a-z]+)|geo\.\d+\.[a-z]+)$}) {
      print "$metaKey good\n";
  }
  else{
     print "$metaKey bad\n";
  }
}

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print "$_ ".(/geo|exception|^[A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+[.\d]+$/?"good":"bad")."\n" for sort keys %metaHash;

Hi,

pls try

^([A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+\.?(\d+|[a-z]+)|geo\.\d.*[a-z])$

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REgards

maybe if exception

^([A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+\.?(\d+|[a-z]+)|geo\.\d.*[a-z]|exception.*)$

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@wilcoxon

I've now found an valid example where

geo.lowercaseword

will this capture that?

if ($metaKey =~ m{^(?:[A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+(?:[0-9]+|\.[a-z]+)|geo\.(?:\d+\.+)*[a-z]+)$})

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Has I suspected the list  of exceptions is growing so having it all in 1 REGEX will work but it makes it un readable

geo.lowercaseword  is already covered by "so unless geo or exception"
But if ABC.lowercaseword is valid, that could simplify it to /geo|exception|^[A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+\.?(\d+|[a-z]+)$/

Is there anything containing "geo" or "exception" that is not valid?

Is there anything containing "geo" or "exception" that is not valid?

"exception"  is going to  be an hard coded list of valid metadata that doesn't fit the format in the opening remarks most are single words so to answer your question no!
Hence the reason to treat these separately and simple skip over using next

in theory every thing starting with lower case   "geo" should also be valid as long as every thing after the first dot is either [a-z] or [0-9] or \.

So for simplicity I may  end up treating these separately

in theory every thing starting with lower case   "geo" should also be valid as long as every thing after the first dot is either [a-z] or [0-9] or \.

That's a little different from how I originally interpreted the problem.
Is "every thing after the first dot is either [a-z] or [0-9] or \." meant to be the same condition as "DOT lowercaseword DOT or numbers"
or are there things that are valid following ^geo but not after ^[A-Z]{2,3}?
If the latter, then you might use
/exception|^(geo[^.]*(\.[a-z\d.]*)?|[A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+\.?(\d+|[a-z]+))$/
Unless "every thing after the first dot is either [a-z] or [0-9] or \." is meant to imply that it is required that a first dot is present in which case
/exception|^(geo[^.]*\.[a-z\d.]*|[A-Z]{2,3}\.[a-z]+\.?(\d+|[a-z]+))$/,
could suffice

yes unless in the exceptions list the first DOT is mandatory

and unless geo what will precede   the first DOT should be upper case AB, KLM or XYZ

Some valid examples of the geo metadata are

geo.datum                =   Transvers mercator
geo.projection          =   WGS 1984
geo.0001.position    =   Lat Long
geo.0001.shape        =   point

Some valid examples of other metadata are

AB.docid
KLM.pubdate
XYZ.title
XYZ.lcword.lcword.1234


the problem I have is that  some have both

AB.docid and ab.docid or ab.docID etc.


So I need to locate the second 2 and remove them

Hopping this makes sence

A few clarifications:

Is "geo" in the exceptions list?

Although you only stated restrictions on what follows the first dot, and did not state any restrictions on what can be between "geo" and the first dot, in your valid examples there is nothing between "geo" and the first dot. Should that be a requirement?

You say
geo.datum                =   Transvers mercator
is valid, but "                =   Transvers mercator" is after the first dot, and is not either [a-z] or [0-9] or \.
Should "                =   .*" be added to the list of every thing after the first dot?

When you have
AB.docid and ab.docid or ab.docID etc.
and you need to locate the second 2 and remove them, should the result be
AB.docid and  or  etc.
Or do you mean that whenever the beginning of a key looks valid except for some extra stuff following, everything after the valid first part should be removed?

Do you want to remove invalid keys and leave valid keys instead of just printing "good" after valid keys and "bad" after invalid keys?

If you change an invalid key into a valid key by removing invalid parts, what should happen if that key then collides with another valid key?  Should the data associated with both keys be combined somehow?

Wow

"geo" is not in the list of exceptions

There is nothing between "geo" and the first DOT the same with the other valid examples so only AB | KLM |XYZ | geo  should be before the first DOT

"geo.datum                =   Transvers mercator"  was an example of a valid key value pair I apologize for the confusion

I am still trying to establish what to do with the non valid metadata

The %metaHash is generated from an SQL query my hunch is once I've worked out what is 'good' and what isn't valid 'bad' I will run update script to remove the 'bad' from the hash and the database

I am also still trying to establish what to do when %metaHash keys clash   this is being discussed by people above my pay scale

Combining the key values and updating the database is 1 option my recommendation is going to be if the key isn't valid the probability is the value will also be invalid however this may not work with every metadata key value pair

For now I'm just trying to establish the good from the bad

I'm hopping for a list of 'bad' meta keys I can then do a visual check of the values to see if these are right or wrong

I can then report back up the pay scale

Based on the last few comments, this should get you closer:

$metaKey =~ m{^[A-Z]{2,3}(?:\.[a-z])+(?:\.?\d+)?$|^geo(?:\.\d+)?\.[a-z]+(?:$|\s)}

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You may want to remove the last (?:$|\s) - it was an attempt to validate geo keys but exclude the \s+=.*

Hi
Solved it found 138 non valid mata tags

I was able to simplify the regex like so

if ($metaKey =~ m{^([A-Z]{2,3}|geo)\.([a-z]+|[0-9]|\.)$.})

Not sure who wins so shared between you