reg expressions part II-controlling the "no" in the expression

[LB]

Hello all-

I am attempting to use a regular expression such as below:

prxparse('/[ N|N| n|n]o.{1,30}infiltrate/i');

For no infiltrate or No infiltrate.

However it is also picking up non xxx infiltrate, normal...infiltrate.

How do I limit it to just no?

I do need the character spaces as there are quite a number of words that can can appear between the two words.

Thank you.

Lawrence

[Doc_Duke]

Welcome to the world of "natural language processing" (NLP).  In specific cases like that I have addressed it with subsequent if-then-else constructs to get at the special cases.  You have to do a bit of desk checking and additional review for new special cases when the data are refreshed. 

Certainly not ideal, but works OK when the searching is reasonably well contained.

Doc

[Keith · Accepted solution]

You can simplify your expression to prxparse('/no\b.*infiltrate/i')

The "\b" defines a word boundary, ".*" then matches any number of characters before "infiltrate".  You already have "/i" at the end of the expression to ignore case, therefore you don't need to specify "N|N n|n" etc.

[LB]

Thanks Keith-That helps immensely-One quick question-what if I do want to set the number of characters as

I don't want to see 'no    '500 characters' infiltrate' which is entirely possible. That is why I was containing it to 30 characters.

Lawrence

[Keith]

Then just change .* to .{1,30} in the expression, as per your original post.  This will allow up to 30 characters between 'no' and 'infiltrate'

[LB]

many thanks Keith!