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comp.lang.ruby

Regexp help needed

Brubix

5/1/2008 8:41:00 AM

I have some text documents containing series of questions and answers.
I need to extract all questions and answers to load a database.
No problem in reading the text document or writing to the database.
I need help with the regexps to parse the document (please note that
some questions and answers extend on two or more lines).

This is an example of the documents I have to deal with:

*1) Is this the first question ?
a. Yes
b. No

*2) Is this question composed
of two lines ?
a. Yes, indeed
b. Maybe
c. I dont' know


Many thanks in advance,
Bruno
3 Answers

James Gray

5/1/2008 2:20:00 PM

0

On May 1, 2008, at 3:41 AM, Brubix wrote:

> I have some text documents containing series of questions and answers.
> I need to extract all questions and answers to load a database.
> No problem in reading the text document or writing to the database.
> I need help with the regexps to parse the document (please note that
> some questions and answers extend on two or more lines).

I would probably do it without leaning on regular expressions in this
case:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -wKU

DATA.each("") do |qna|
answers = qna.to_a
question = answers.shift
question << answers.shift until question.strip[-1] == ??

puts "Question: #{question}"
puts "Answers:"
puts answers
end

__END__
*1) Is this the first question ?
a. Yes
b. No

*2) Is this question composed
of two lines ?
a. Yes, indeed
b. Maybe
c. I dont' know

If you really want the regular expression though, this seems to work:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -wKU

DATA.read.scan(/^(\*\d+\) [\s\S]+?\?) *\n((?:^[a-z]. .+?\n)+)/m) do
|q, a|
puts "Question: #{q}"
puts "Answers:"
puts a.to_a
end

__END__
*1) Is this the first question ?
a. Yes
b. No

*2) Is this question composed
of two lines ?
a. Yes, indeed
b. Maybe
c. I dont' know

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II

yermej

5/1/2008 2:32:00 PM

0

On May 1, 3:41 am, Brubix <bruno.bazz...@tin.it> wrote:
> I have some text documents containing series of questions and answers.
> I need to extract all questions and answers to load a database.
> No problem in reading the text document or writing to the database.
> I need help with the regexps to parse the document (please note that
> some questions and answers extend on two or more lines).
>
> This is an example of the documents I have to deal with:

qa = "*1) Is this the first question ?
a. Yes
b. No

*2) Is this question composed
of two lines ?
a. Yes, indeed
b. Maybe
c. I dont' know"

qa.scan(/(\*\d+\).*?\?.*?)([^*]*)/m).map do |q, ans|
[q, ans.scan(/\n([a-z]\..*)/).flatten]
end

=> [["*1) Is this the first question ?", ["a. Yes", "b. No"]], ["*2)
Is this question composed\nof two lines ?", ["a. Yes, indeed", "b.
Maybe", "c. I dont' know "]]]

That makes various assumptions about the appearance of '*' and how
answers start/end, but it should be a start.

Brubix

5/2/2008 7:22:00 AM

0

All the proposed solutions work perfectly !

Thanks to both of you.