REGEXP help with anchors

[Mike Wilson]

I am having some issues with getting the matches I want.  Or dont want more specifically.  

Here is what I am doing.  

I have fields that I am adding into a list.  

set list

when I echo the list i get:

DR^NAME^HERE {MORE^DR^NAMES^N^^^MD~THIS^DOC^NAMES^P^^^MD}

I then try and run a regexp against them:

lsearch -regexp $list “HI”

This matches due to the “THIS” in the second part of the list.  However, I dont want it to.  I want it to match only if HI is by itself.  

If I take the regexp outside of tcl I can do anchors such as HIb .  Then it will only match if the list is

DR^NAME^HERE {MORE^DR^NAMES^N^^^MD~HI^DOC^NAMES^P^^^MD}

How do I get this regexp to work inside of TCL?  Thanks in advance for any help!

Topic

[Rehman Masood]

Try this,

lsearch -regexp $list “^HI$”

[Keith McLeod]

You could also use something like “[~^]HI[~^]”

This would qualify it as being preceded or followed by a ~ or ^ character. Nothing else should make this true.

[Charlie Bursell]

^ only matches at the beginning of a string and $ at the end

the expr:

lsearch -inline -regexp $list {mHIM}

m says match only at beginning of a word while M matches at the end of a word

From lsearch man page:

-regexp

Pattern is treated as a regular expression and matched against each list element using the rules described in the re_syntax reference page.

re-syntax:

NAME

re_syntax – Syntax of Tcl regular expressions.

DESCRIPTION

DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF REs

REGULAR EXPRESSION SYNTAX

*

+

?

{m}

{m,}

{m,n}

*? +? ?? {m}? {m,}? {m,n}?

(re)

(?:re)

()

(?:)

[chars]

.

k

c

{

x

^

$

(?=re)

(?!re)

BRACKET EXPRESSIONS

ESCAPES

a

b

B

cX

e

f

n

r

t

uwxyz

Ustuvwxyz

v

xhhh

xy

xyz

d

s

w

D

S

W

A

m

M

y

Y

Z

m

mnn

METASYNTAX

b

c

e

i

m

n

p

q

s

t

w

x

[Author]

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