RE: File name regular expression

["Dennis Lovelady" <iseries@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Oops.  That's ^pfi_[A-Z0-9]*.xml$ (I forgot the underscore).

On your question of $ and end-of-string -  If your filename ended with
xml<space> then this would not match.  Or if it ended with xmls or
xml<anything>  But if your filename ends with .xml then this will match.
Note that it will also match if your filename is pfi_Zxml (note absence of
digits and absence of decimal).  The period in the expression above is not
looking for a period character.  It is looking for any character.  If you
wanted only digits, and if you wanted to require a period before XML, your
expression might look like:
    ^pfi_[0-9]+\.xml$


Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel."
        -- Will Kommen 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis Lovelady [mailto:iseries@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 2:59 PM
> To: 'RPG programming on the IBM i / System i'
> Subject: RE: File name regular expression
>
> > I am attempting to match a file name pattern to file names read from
> an
> > IFS directory.  What I want is the pattern pfi_nnnn.xml.  The files I
> > want will begin with 'pfi_', and end with '.xml'.  Currently there
> are
> > 10 digits in between but I wanted to be able to handle varying
> numbers.
> > My expression compiles ok but it doesn't match the file names.  Doing
> > more research on the web makes me think I'm pretty close but hasn't
> > given me clear direction about the use of the '^' and '$' symbols for
> > matching the beginning and end of a string.  In particular, the end
> of
> > a string.  I am attempting to match '.xml' using (.xml)$.  My reading
> > has me wondering if $ only matches the last character and not
> multiple
> > characters.  Hopefully someone on the list can help me out with this.
> > I am posting my current expression below.
> >
> >
> > ^(pfi_)[A-Z0-9](.xml)$
>
> You're so close!
>
> I would do ^pfi[A-Z0-9]*.xml*.  There's no advantage that I see so your
> parentheses.
>
> (It's the missing splat that's killing you now.)
>
> Dennis Lovelady
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
> --
> Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.