Regular Expression to break row with comma separated values into distinct rows

Posted by Nick on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Nick
Published on 2010-05-09T10:01:45Z Indexed on 2010/05/09 10:08 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 302

Filed under:

regex

|

comma-separated

I have a file with many rows. Each row has a column which may contain comma separated values. I need each row to be distinct (ie no comma separated values).

Here is an example row:

AB  AB10,AB11,AB12,AB15,AB16,AB21,AB22,AB23,AB24,AB25,AB99  ABERDEEN    Aberdeenshire

The columns are comma separated (Postcode area, Postcode districts, Post town, Former postal county).

So the above row would get turned into:

AB  AB10    ABERDEEN    Aberdeenshire
AB  AB11    ABERDEEN    Aberdeenshire
AB  AB12    ABERDEEN    Aberdeenshire
...
...

I tried the following but it didn't work...

(.+)\t(([0-9A-Z]+),)+\t(.+)\t(.+)

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about regex

Find multiple regex in each line and skip result if one of the regex doesn't match

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a list of variables: variables = ['VariableA', 'VariableB','VariableC'] which I'm going to search for, line by line ifile = open("temp.txt",'r') d = {} match = zeros(len(variables)) for line in ifile: emptyCells=0 for i in range(len(variables)): regex = r'('+variables[i]+r')[:|=|\(](-… >>> More
OWASP Regex Repository: Is this regex correct?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I was looking at the regular expression for validating various data types from the (OWASP Regex Repository). One of the regular expressions in there is called safetext and looks like: ^[a-zA-Z0-9\s.\-]+$ My first question is: Is this regular expression correct? complementary question If this… >>> More
Make a Perl-style regex interpreter behave like a basic or extended regex interpreter

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a tool to help students learn regular expressions. I will probably be writing it in Java. The idea is this: the student types in a regular expression and the tool shows which parts of a text will get matched by the regex. Simple enough. But I want to support several different regex… >>> More
JS regex isn't matching, even thought it works with a regex tester

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm writing a piece of client-side javascript code that takes a function and finds the derivative of it, however, the regex that's supposed to match with the power rule fails to work in the context of the javascript program, even though it sucessfully matches when it's used with an independent regex… >>> More
c# RegEx with "|"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need to be able to check for a pattern with | in them. For example an expression like d*|*t should return true for a string like "dtest|test". I'm no regex hero so I just tried a couple of things, like: Regex Pattern = new Regex("s*\|*d"); //unable to build because of single backslash Regex Pattern… >>> More

Related posts about comma-separated

Select comma separated result from via comma separated parameter

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
Select comma separated result from via comma separated parameter PROCEDURE [dbo].[GetCommaSepStringsByCommaSepNumericIds] (@CommaSepNumericIds varchar(max)) AS BEGIN /* exec GetCommaSepStringsByCommaSepNumericIds '1xx1, 1xx2, 1xx3' */ DECLARE @returnCommaSepIds varchar(max); with… >>> More
Add comma-separated value of grouped rows to existing query

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I've got a view for reports, that looks something like this: SELECT a.id, a.value1, a.value2, b.value1, /* (+50 more such columns)*/ FROM a JOIN b ON (b.id = a.b_id) JOIN c ON (c.id = b.c_id) LEFT JOIN d ON (d.id = b.d_id) LEFT JOIN e ON (e.id = d.e_id) /* (+10 more inner/left joins) */ It… >>> More
How to get a Magento product collection as a comma separated list of SKU's

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi All I have a custom module I made for Magento. From the admin, there is a multi-select list of store products. The selected products from this are output in the form of a comma separated list of SKU's - for example: // Get Featured Products from list $configData = Mage::getStoreConfig('featured_products'); … >>> More
parsing issue with comma separated csv file

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am trying to extract 4th column from csv file (comma separated, and skipping first 2 header lines) using this command, awk 'NR <2 {next}{FS =","}{print $4}' filename.csv | more However, it doesn't work because the first column cantains comma, thus 4th column is not really 4th. Below is an… >>> More
Taking a comma separated list and creating a unordered list

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I've got a simple list which is generated by a checkbox list. The generated code is simply this white,blue,red,black I need to use jquery to wrap each of these elements in a < li tag. How do you go through the list and use the comma as a separator? I also will need to delete the comma. Sometime… >>> More