Hi Guys,

 I am trying to generate some dynamic code. and need to replace the Public Sub New in vb.net

Multiline and Case ignore is on and i am using .net regex engine.

(PUBLIC|PRIVATE)\s+(SUB)\s+NEW([.\n]*|(END\s+SUB|END\s+FUNCTION))

I Needs To Match

Public Sub New()      *(With Or Without Brackets) - (Can be Either Public OR Private As Well)
            <Anything Here Could be 100lines long...>
End Sub

Any Ideas?
Beachnerd
 

What happens when you try your pattern against some real text? How is that different to what you expect?

Just looking at the pattern I would make a couple of comments:

1) the [.\n]* sub-pattern is greedy which means that it will match ALL of the following:

Public Sub New()
   HelloString = "Hi"
End Sub

Private Function ErrorCode()
   HelloString = "Error"
End Function

2) You just look for 'sub' at the start but allow 'sub' or 'function' at the end

3) While it is not wrong, you can make the last part of the pattern

    (END\s+(SUB|FUNCTION))

4) This will find text in comments which is probably not a good place to look

Actually, you can make this a bit tighter with something like

^\s*(public|private)\s+(sub|function)\s+NEW  ..other stuff here..  ^\s*END\s+\2$

if you read the posting guidelines at http://regexadvice.com/forums/thread/37499.aspx you will see that we really require a number of things that you have not given us before we can really help. In particular, some real text, the regex (I'm assuming .NET) and a good description of what you are looking for and what you asre trying to do.

Susan

 

Aussie Susan:

What happens when you try your pattern against some real text? How is that different to what you expect?

Just looking at the pattern I would make a couple of comments:

1) the [.\n]* sub-pattern is greedy which means that it will match ALL of the following:

Public Sub New()
   HelloString = "Hi"
End Sub

Private Function ErrorCode()
   HelloString = "Error"
End Function

 

Actually Susan [.\n]* only matches two possible characters. 

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Michael

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Albert Einstein

Errr.. Ooops.....

Didn't look closely enough and I read that as (.\n)* which I think the OP actually meant

Susan 

Aussie Susan:

Errr.. Ooops.....

Didn't look closely enough and I read that as (.\n)* which I think the OP actually meant

Susan 

Actually that still wouldn't be the same thing. Now you are just matching pairs of  characters, the last character and the newline after it. Where you going for (.|\n)*   I think what the OP wanted was the effect of singleline mode without using that option. I think the OP meant to use the character class they just used it incorrectly for their goal.  When I have some time later I am going to write up a blog article on the topic for a frame of reference.  This type of error is common and I was going to address another common error as well.

 

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Michael

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Albert Einstein

I really should learn not to look at this forum when I only have a few minutes before my train leaves on the morning, so that I can read what is really there and type what I really mean!

Thank you for the correction

Susan