Text Manipulation with Regular Expressions Part 1

A 'regex' is typically a carefully crafted string that describes a pattern of text. It can:

• Extract components of the text,
• Substitute components of the text, or
• Determine if the pattern simply appears in the text.

\b19(?=(1|2))(\d{2})\b and 20\2
converts years in the 1910s and 1920s to the 2010s and 2020s
(but leaves later years as they are).

• An online regex tester, regex101 (https://regex101.com/).
• Example “subject” text in SCUG repo.
  (Google “OU scug github”.)
• A local text editor, choose one of the following:
  • Atom (https://atom.io/).
  • Notepad++ (https://notepad-plus-plus.org/).

• Today's as language agnostic as possible. SAS, R, and Python examples in Part 2.

• Later, consider RegexBuddy for $40.

• There's no single “regular expression” specification. Each language (eg, Python, R, Java) have slightly different flavors.
• There are two main branches of the specification. We'll concentrate on
  • the “Perl” branch (eg, "\d\w") instead of
  • the “Posix” branch (eg, "[:digit:][:alnum:]")
• Don't forget the “g” option in regex101.com

• Identify years in the 1990s, or
• Identify years ending in 7, 8, or 9, or
• Identify lines starting with a year, or
• “Capture” the century of each year, or
• Think of something else.

1916-1918 subscales for a subject
1998-1914 subscales for a subject
subscales for a subject 1998-1920

• Start in a regex tester.
• Start small/simple, then slowly build complexity & generality.
  • In the regex.
  • In the example/subject text.
• Leave a breadcrumb trail
  (ie, progression of simpler regexes, commented out).
• Include comments to help others and you later.
• Short-term: use the right-panels of regex101.com.

• Blacklist: Flag the bad numeric values. (Sometimes “bad” is a subjective decision.)
• Whitelist: Permit only the good values.

1234
23

14a
1a3

 234
1.39

In the right panel of bottom right panel of regex101.com. Especially these first:

. versus \.
\w and \d and \s (versus \W and \D and \S)
^ and \A
$ and \Z
? and * and + and things like {3,6}
Capturing
Character classes

• Swap the columns.

"CL_ID"            = "ClientID"
, "RMSEQ"          = "RemovedSequence"
, "RMVL_BEGDT"     = "RemovalBeginDate"
, "RMVL_ENDDT"     = "RemovalEndDate"
, "END_TYP_CDE"    = "EndTypeID"
, "REMOVED_FROM"   = "RemovedFromTypeID"
, "CURR_RMVL_TYP"  = "RemovalTypeCurrentID"
, "ORIG_RMVL_TYP"  = "RemovalTypeOriginalID"
, "FMLY_STRUCTURE" = "FamilyStructureTypeID"

• Anticipate misbehaving subject that you haven't seen yet.
• Try variations of the solutions. There are usually 10 solutions, each with strengths and weaknesses.
  • Robustness.
  • Readability & maintainability.
  • Generality.
• Create very selective regexes that loudly fail when they encounter subject text that you haven't anticipated.
• Long-term: read and rereadRegular Expressions Cookbook, esp Ch 2.

• Erase the “quietly” parameters.
  • In a single file
  • In many files

requireNamespace("dplyr", quietly=TRUE) #hadley/dplyr
requireNamespace("lubridate")
requireNamespace("OuhscMunge",quietly=T) #OuhscBbmc/OuhscMunge

• Pad single digits with zeros (eg, “4” becomes “04”)

9
4
34
3
62
43
1

• Extract the cage ID
• Extract the mouse ID (within the cage)

Time,Gender,Genetype,Treatment,MouseID,OR-Recognition Index,FC-t-F %,FC-b-F %,FC-a-F %
4M,Male,WILD,Control,c9-1,0.32,11.9,0,25.7
4M,Male,WILD,Control,c13-2,0.47,23.7,0,11.
4M,Male,WILD,Prozac,c10-2,0.62,40.7,11.4,51.4
4M,Male,WILD,Prozac,c14-3,0.63,10.2,0,28.6
4M,Male,YFP,Control,c9-2,0.42,42.4,11.4,22.9
4M,Male,YFP,Control,c13-1,0.5,15.3,0,54.1
4M,Male,YFP,Control,c13-nm,1,27.1,0,31.4
4M,Male,YFP,Prozac,c10-1,0.65,20.3,17.1,54.3

(In some cases, you'd have to parse only the cell, not the entire line. But this is good practice.)

• Work by yourself or in pairs.
• After you're done with these 6 exercises,
  • Invent new challenges
  • Help someone else
  • Check the solutions I thought of.

Look for an email invitation to a REDCap survey.

Example 3

(,*\s*)"(\w+)"\s+=\s+"(\w+)" and
$1"$3"    = "$2"

Example 4

library\((\w+),\s*quietly=(T|TRUE)\) and 
library($1)

Example 5

\b(\d)\b and 
0$1

Example 6

,c(\d{1,2})-(\d|nm),