RE: Using regular expressions within xpath predicates

I'm reminded of the great quote:

> Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use
regular expressions."  Now they have two problems.

Seriously though, even though they can be daunting, Regex's (as regular
expressions are often abbreviated) are a great tool to have in your tool
box, especially (exclusively?) when it comes to analyzing text.

Xpath is similar to Perl regexs in some aspects, different in others,
but if you search for Xpath 2 regular expressions, you should get some
great reference links.  Dr. Kay's XSLT/Xpath book also has a great
reference chapter if you're looking for a starting point.

~Chris

Christopher Scott
Manager - ICAP/Gators Integrations - Fiserv Lending Solutions


Christopher Scott
Manager - ICAP/Gators Integrations - Fiserv Lending Solutions
(412) 261 - 4791 ext. 3511
fls.integration@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Honnen [mailto:Martin.Honnen@xxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 12:39 PM
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  Using regular expressions within xpath predicates

Randy Booth wrote:
> Sweet!  That seems to work...  What is the "^\d+$" doing exactly?
> I've done a few searches and didn't come up with anything...  where
> would its use be documented?

It is a regular expression where
   ^
means the start of the string,
   \d
means a decimal digit
   \d+
means one or more digits and
   $
means the end of the string.

The exact syntax of regular expressions differs from programming
language to programming language but most tutorials on regular
expressions should cover that.


--

	Martin Honnen
	http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/