advanced regular expressions

[rrotstain]

Hi folks,

Excuse me if this question has already been asked, i searched but could not find it.

What i need to do is use regular expressions to parse text that contains a location, such as "Las Vegas, Nevada, USA". However, I need the regular expression to look like "<city>, <state>, <country>" since there can be many values for cities, states, and countries. This is a textbook example for the java.util.regex.Pattern and java.util.regex.Matcher classes except for the fact I don't want to write a regular expression such as "Las Vegas|San Francisco|New York|.....". There are many cities, states, and countries in the world. I need to be able to customize it such as whenever the Pattern class sees the text "<city>", it should match against a particular list of valid values.

This may be solvable with a framework like ANTLR, but I'm wondering whether it can be done using plain Java.

Regards,
Ronen

[Fubarable]

For regular expressions to work, the data must be regular, must have a definable pattern. Do you know of any patterns that define your data and are never broken?

[JosAH]

For regular expressions to work, the data must be regular

<useless Saturday nitpick>
Any finit amount of data over a finit alphabet is regular.
</useless Saturday nitpick>

kindest regards,

Jos ;-)

[Fubarable]

<useless Saturday nitpick>
Any finit amount of data over a finit alphabet is regular.
</useless Saturday nitpick>

kindest regards,

<Useless reply to useless nitpick>
Perhaps I should say that regex may not be the best tool to use for parsing text that is not defined by a regular grammar.

Fire back when ready.
</Useless reply to useless nitpick>

[JosAH]

<Useless reply to useless nitpick>
Perhaps I should say that regex may not be the best tool to use for parsing text that is not defined by a regular grammar.

Fire back when ready.
</Useless reply to useless nitpick>

<corollary to previous useless Saturday nitpick>
Every finit amount of data can be described by a finit regular expression.
</corollary to previous useless Saturday nitpick>

kindest regards,

Jos ;-)

[Fubarable]

<corollary to previous useless Saturday nitpick>
Every finit amount of data can be described by a finit regular expression.
</corollary to previous useless Saturday nitpick>

<Eristic Rebuttal>
And yer nuthin' but a Grolsch-swilling defenestratin' fool.
</Eristic Rebuttal>

I win.

[JosAH]

<Eristic Rebuttal>
And yer nuthin' but a Grolsch-swilling defenestratin' fool.
</Eristic Rebuttal>

I win.

<very intelligent reply>
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt like elderberries.
</very intelligent reply>

<corollary to very intelligent reply>
:-P :-P :-P
</corollary to very intelligent reply>

So there!

kindest regards,

Jos (<-- loves intellectual discussions ;-)