Lua string.gsub without printing match count - lua

Frustratingly, any my previous Lua tries went in extensive Google searching of more/less same Lua resources, and then resulted in some multi-line code to get basic things, which i.e. I get from Python with simple command.
Same again, I want to replace substring from string, and use i.e.:
string.gsub("My string", "str", "th")
which results in:
My thing 1
I imagine replacement count can be useful, but who would expect it by default, and without option to suppress it, but maybe I miss something?
How to print just string result, without counter?

Enclose in parentheses: (string.gsub("My string", "str", "th")).

The results are only a problem because you are using print, which takes multiple parameters. Lua allows multiple assignments, so normally the code would look like
newstr, n = string.gsub("My string", "str", "th")
but the count is only provided if there is a place to put it, so
newstr = string.gsub("My string", "str", "th")
is also fine, and causes the count to be discarded. If you are using print directly (the same applies to return) then you should enclose the call in parentheses to discard all but the first result.

Related

wxMaxima: how to use texput to tell tex1 how to handle strings?

tex1() seems to return all strings as follow:
tex1(hello);
{\it hello}
tex1("hello");
\mbox{ hello }
What variable must one use to change this handling via texput? e.g. if I would just like it to print strings literally? I'm using other Maxima commands (like printf and concat to produce strings that are then passed to tex1, and occasionally the default handling is causing issues.
I tried texput(""", ...) and texput("''", ...); the first wasn't accepted, the 2nd was, but did not change the output. I really have no clue for the non-quoted strings.
Let's be careful to distinguish symbols from strings. When you enter tex1(hello) then hello is a symbol, and when you enter tex1("hello") then "hello" is a string. Symbols are essentially names for items in a lookup table, which can store additional info (symbol properties) for each. Strings on the other hand are just (from Maxima's point of view) just a sequence of characters.
Anyway changing the output for all symbols or all strings is unfortunately not possible via texput. But with a one-line Lisp function, one can accomplish it. Try this: for symbols,
:lisp (defun tex-stripdollar (sym) (maybe-invert-string-case (symbol-name (stripdollar sym))))
and for strings,
:lisp (defun tex-string (str) str)
These are going to change some existing outputs, so you'll want to try it and see if it works for you.

Rails strip all except numbers commas and decimal points

Hi I've been struggling with this for the last hour and am no closer. How exactly do I strip everything except numbers, commas and decimal points from a rails string? The closest I have so far is:-
rate = rate.gsub!(/[^0-9]/i, '')
This strips everything but the numbers. When I try add commas to the expression, everything is getting stripped. I got the aboves from somewhere else and as far as I can gather:
^ = not
Everything to the left of the comma gets replaced by what's in the '' on the right
No idea what the /i does
I'm very new to gsub. Does anyone know of a good tutorial on building expressions?
Thanks
Try:
rate = rate.gsub(/[^0-9,\.]/, '')
Basically, you know the ^ means not when inside the character class brackets [] which you are using, and then you can just add the comma to the list. The decimal needs to be escaped with a backslash because in regular expressions they are a special character that means "match anything".
Also, be aware of whether you are using gsub or gsub!
gsub! has the bang, so it edits the instance of the string you're passing in, rather than returning another one.
So if using gsub! it would be:
rate.gsub!(/[^0-9,\.]/, '')
And rate would be altered.
If you do not want to alter the original variable, then you can use the version without the bang (and assign it to a different var):
cleaned_rate = rate.gsub!(/[^0-9,\.]/, '')
I'd just google for tutorials. I haven't used one. Regexes are a LOT of time and trial and error (and table-flipping).
This is a cool tool to use with a mini cheat-sheet on it for ruby that allows you to quickly edit and test your expression:
http://rubular.com/
You can just add the comma and period in the square-bracketed expression:
rate.gsub(/[^0-9,.]/, '')
You don't need the i for case-insensitivity for numbers and symbols.
There's lots of info on regular expressions, regex, etc. Maybe search for those instead of gsub.
You can use this:
rate = rate.gsub!(/[^0-9\.\,]/g,'')
Also check this out to learn more about regular expressions:
http://www.regexr.com/

Lua pattern help (Double parentheses)

I have been coding a program in Lua that automatically formats IRC logs from a roleplay. In the roleplay logs there is a specific guideline for "Out of character" conversation, which we use double parentheses for. For example: ((<Things unrelated to roleplay go here>)). I have been trying to have my program remove text between double brackets (and including both brackets). The code is:
ofile = io.open("Output.txt", "w")
rfile = io.open("Input.txt", "r")
p = rfile:read("*all")
w = string.gsub(p, "%(%(.*?%)%)", "")
ofile:write(w)
The pattern here is > "%(%(.*?%)%)" I've tried multiple variations of the pattern. All resulted in fruitless results:
1. %(%(.*?%)%) --Wouldn't do anything.
2. %(%(.*%)%) --Would remove *everything* after the first OOC message.
Then, my friend told me that prepending the brackets with percentages wouldn't work, and that I had to use backslashes to 'escape' the parentheses.
3. \(\(.*\)\) --resulted in the output file being completely empty.
4. (\(\(.*\)\)) --Same result as above.
5. (\(\(.*?\)\) --would for some reason, remove large parts of the text for no apparent reason.
6. \(\(.*?\)\) --would just remove all the text except for the last line.
The short, absolute question:
What pattern would I need to use to remove all text between double parentheses, and remove the double parentheses themselves too?
You're friend is thinking of regular expressions. Lua patterns are similar, but different. % is the correct escape character.
Your pattern should be %(%(.-%)%). The - is similar to * in that it matches any number of the preceding sequence, but while * tries to match as many characters as it can (it's greedy), - matches the least amount of characters possible (it's non-greedy). It won't go overboard and match extra double-close-parenthesis.

gsub { $1.upcase } ? Is equivalent to .capitalize?

I found in the legacy code the following:
"myString".sub(/^(.)/) {$1.upcase} seems very weird. While executing in IRB, I got the same result as "myString".capitalize
Wasn't able to find the documentation... so ended up on SO
Not exactly,
"myString".capitalize
#=> "Mystring"
"myString".sub(/^(.)/) {$1.upcase}
#=> "MyString"
From the docs for capitalize
Returns a copy of str with the first character converted to uppercase and the remainder to lowercase. Note: case conversion is effective only in ASCII region.
sub accepts an optional block instead of a replacement parameter. If given, it places the sub-matches into global variables, invokes the block, and returns the matched portion of the string with the block's return value.
The regular expression in question finds the first character at the beginning of a line. It places that character in $1 because it's contained in a sub-match (), invokes the block, which returns $1.upcase.
As an aside, this is a brain-dead way of capitalizing a string. Even if you didn't know about .capitalize or this code is from before .capitalize was available (?), you could still have simply done myString[0] = myString[0].upcase. The only possible benefit is the .sub method will work if the string is empty, where ""[0].upcase will raise an exception. Still, the better way of circumventing that problem is myString[0] = myString[0].upcase if myString.length > 0
Both are not exactly same. sub is used to replace the first occurrence of the pattern specified, whereas gsub does it for all occurrences (that is, it replaces globally).
In your question, regular expression is the first character i.e., $1 and replaces with $1.upcase.
CODE :
"myString".sub(/^(.)/) {$1.upcase}
OUTPUT :
"MyString"
CODE :
"myString".capitalize
OUTPUT :
"Mystring"

Regular expression in Ruby

Could anybody help me make a proper regular expression from a bunch of text in Ruby. I tried a lot but I don't know how to handle variable length titles.
The string will be of format <sometext>title:"<actual_title>"<sometext>. I want to extract actual_title from this string.
I tried /title:"."/ but it doesnt find any matches as it expects a closing quotation after one variable from opening quotation. I couldn't figure how to make it check for variable length of string. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
. matches any single character. Putting + after a character will match one or more of those characters. So .+ will match one or more characters of any sort. Also, you should put a question mark after it so that it matches the first closing-quotation mark it comes across. So:
/title:"(.+?)"/
The parentheses are necessary if you want to extract the title text that it matched out of there.
/title:"([^"]*)"/
The parentheses create a capturing group. Inside is first a character class. The ^ means it's negated, so it matches any character that's not a ". The * means 0 or more. You can change it to one or more by using + instead of *.
I like /title:"(.+?)"/ because of it's use of lazy matching to stop the .+ consuming all text until the last " on the line is found.
It won't work if the string wraps lines or includes escaped quotes.
In programming languages where you want to be able to include the string deliminator inside a string you usually provide an 'escape' character or sequence.
If your escape character was \ then you could write something like this...
/title:"((?:\\"|[^"])+)"/
This is a railroad diagram. Railroad diagrams show you what order things are parsed... imagine you are a train starting at the left. You consume title:" then \" if you can.. if you can't then you consume not a ". The > means this path is preferred... so you try to loop... if you can't you have to consume a '"' to finish.
I made this with https://regexper.com/#%2Ftitle%3A%22((%3F%3A%5C%5C%22%7C%5B%5E%22%5D)%2B)%22%2F
but there is now a plugin for Atom text editor too that does this.

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