RegEx like in SQL WHERE

[Former Member]

Hello!

I want to search in internal tables lines like I do this in where expression of sql, but thought the instrumentality of RegEx.

For example, internal table have 2 lines:

Implementations and running times

implementation language

I want to find like in SQL such string 'implrun*'

How can I do that in RegEx?

[Former Member]

Is something like this what you're looking for?

TYPES: BEGIN OF ty_table,
 line(80) TYPE c.
TYPES: END OF ty_table.

DATA:
  l_t_table      TYPE TABLE OF ty_table,
  l_s_table      TYPE  ty_table,
  l_v_regex(80)  TYPE c VALUE 'impl(?:.+)run(?:.+)'.


l_s_table-line = 'Implementations and running times'.
APPEND l_s_table TO l_t_table.
l_s_table-line = 'implementation language'.
APPEND l_s_table TO l_t_table.


LOOP AT l_t_table INTO l_s_table.
  FIND FIRST OCCURRENCE OF REGEX l_v_regex IN l_s_table-line IGNORING CASE.
  IF sy-subrc = 0.
    WRITE:/ l_s_table-line.
  ENDIF.
ENDLOOP.

[Former Member]

Jerry Coleman, Yes, that is! Great!

I know that:

"." - any symbol

"+" - 1 or more times

But what mean "(?:.+)" ?

[Former Member]

(?:.+)

There are two parts to this: The *.+* means as you expect. I put parentheses around it for readability. Since I put parentheses, this causes what's matched in the regular expression to be captured in a group.

But I don't want it captured, so I use ?: to suppress the capture. This is for performance only. You could write it as:

impl(.+)run(.+)

[Former Member]

Jerry Coleman, thanks!

[former_member194669]

Try this way

data: p_regex(80)  TYPE c VALUE 'impl(.+)run(.+)'.

data: regex         type ref to cl_abap_regex,
      matcher       type ref to cl_abap_matcher,
      ls_result     type match_result,
      lt_result     type match_result_tab.

condense p_regex.
    create object regex
      exporting
        pattern     = p_regex
        ignore_case = ''.

* For REGEX match
    matcher = cl_abap_matcher=>create(
                   pattern     = p_regex
                   ignore_case = ' '
                   table       = i_temp ). " i_temp is your internal table contains records

lt_result = matcher->find_all( ).

a®

[former_member194669]

You can try with also

impl(.*)run(.*)

a®

[Sandra_Rossi]

All details of how work regular expressions can be found in [sap library - regular expressions|http://help.sap.com/abapdocu/en/ABENREGEX_SYNTAX.htm]