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Need regular expression to parse a log line, I have to select data after 10th occurrences of pipe symbol |

Sample log line;

Info     device  Allow:FWD|TCP|data1|data2|data3|data4|data5|data6|data7|data8|data9|data10|data11|0|1|0|0|0|0||||||

I have to select data9 from above log line.

Below is the expression I am using right now, this is for a Java program

Expresssion:

\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|([^|]*)\|

selection group 11

Instead of escape character one by one would like to skip/ignore 10 pipe symbols and select data9

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3
  • 14
    Now you have two problems.
    – Mark
    Mar 31, 2020 at 21:10
  • 3
    Why do you need a regular expression to do this?
    – curiousdannii
    Apr 1, 2020 at 14:56
  • In the regex posted "selection group 11" is actually data10, not data9. (However, it won't actually match at all since you are matching 1 too many pipe symbols, or there is a pipe symbol missing from the "sample log line"?)
    – MrWhite
    Apr 1, 2020 at 23:12

2 Answers 2

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30

That's why quantifiers are for.

^(?:[^|]*\|){10}([^|]*)
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8
  • 1
    ^(?:.*?\|){10}(.*?)\| This is cleaner in my view. The questioner says they're using Java and Java totally supports this syntax.
    – Olivier Grégoire
    Apr 1, 2020 at 11:10
  • 9
    @OlivierGrégoire: Your regex takes 117 steps, mine 37 steps
    – Toto
    Apr 1, 2020 at 12:06
  • Wow, first time I hear about "steps". I gotta check that metrics in the future. I still find my regex more "clean", but I totally agree yours might be more efficient.
    – Olivier Grégoire
    Apr 1, 2020 at 12:18
  • 2
    [^|]* is definitely faster, because there's no possibility of backtracking. I might even use [^|\n] in order to ensure the regex doesn't run off the end of a line (e.g. in case a line has less than 10 fields for any reason).
    – nneonneo
    Apr 1, 2020 at 19:38
  • 1
    @OlivierGrégoire Yours looks for at least 10 | characters. Toto's looks for exactly 10.
    – CJ Dennis
    Apr 2, 2020 at 1:22
21

If you're using a regex in the context of another programming language (Python, C#, etc.), that language likely has some type of string splitting function. In my experience, it's usually easier to split on the delimiter and get a list/array of values instead of using regexes to split.

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5
  • This is only true of a very simple single character split. The moment you need to do "beginning of the string" or "this character or that character" or "replace with this pattern that is matched" then you get a nightmare with nested array looping logic.
    – Nelson
    Apr 1, 2020 at 3:37
  • 7
    C# for example both has parameter in split str.Split(new []{'|'}, 10) (alternatively "|".ToCharArray()), and indexing with str.Split('|')[10..] if you want the remainder split too. These solutions will often run faster than a regex, so for simple cases where they can be used it might be a better choice. If course if you need complexity then regex can be better, but for this case split functions may be better suited.
    – Tedd Hansen
    Apr 1, 2020 at 10:22
  • 2
    @Nelson "This is only true of a very simple single character split." - Like the example given in the question.
    – MrWhite
    Apr 1, 2020 at 22:24
  • In my experience, text parsing always has edge cases that wasn't initially thought of. You don't want to pick a solution where solving edge cases becomes exponentially more difficult.
    – Nelson
    Apr 2, 2020 at 2:45
  • In C# there is an overload where a string can be passed as a delimiter, not only a single char: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/…
    – Marian Spanik
    Apr 2, 2020 at 11:55

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