regular expression question

[droolin]

Im trying to build a regular expresion that will catch special characters within a nick, and I am using the free regular expression utility pcre to test with before I put it into the script. To this point, I have been able to correctly identify the following special characters via my regular expresion: (){}|[]`^, basicatly I just made it a regular expression class.

Code: Select all

[\[\](){}|'`^]

The only special character that I seem to have problems with identifying is the escape character \. The tutorials that I have read say that you should do this: \\ for it to be considered a regular character. But, alas... Not working.

Can anyone offer any sugestions on how I can identify that character in a regular expresion? Or, should I forgo the regular expresion option for that character only, and use an array to look for it???

Thank you in advance.

droolin

[stdragon]

Depends if you're using { } or " " to enclose the regular expression. If { }, then \\ is right. Otherwise, you actually need \\\\.

[droolin]

I have not moved anything into the tcl script yet, I was using the utility like I said for testing. I had enclosed all the special characters I was looking for within the [ ], and it worked. Im new to this, never did regular expresion at all before. Thats why I grabbed that utility to help me test.
Chuckle, I had tried \\ and \\\.. but, not \\\\.
thank you, I will try that next.

droolin

[stdragon]

You'd be better off using tclsh to do the testing. Not all regular expression parsers are the same.

[droolin]

I know that the utility I was using was written for perl and not tcl. And the reading I have done, tutorials on regular expresion. I have seen some differences(I think) between tcl and perl regular expressions. I am also writting some things in perl also, so its not a wasted download.
What you just told me was a huge help. I didn't even know I had this utility on my unix box, and I was testing on my windows machine. After a bit of reading, I will definatly use this utility alot. Specially after the bit I just tested. Again, what you just told me is a huge help. Both for now, and later projects.
Thank you again.

droolin