Practical 4

Regular expressions

1. Navigate to https://regex101.com.

2. Copy and paste the text below into the TEST STRING page on regex101.

   Luke Skywalker
   C-3PO
   R2-D2
   Darth Vader
   Leia Organa
   Owen Lars
   Beru Whitesun Lars
   R5-D4
   Biggs Darklighter
   Obi-Wan Kenobi
   Anakin Skywalker
   Wilhuff Tarkin
   Chewbacca
   Han Solo

3. Identify regular expressions to match:

   1. Each character’s first name.
   2. Each character’s last name.
   3. All names beginning with L.
   4. Each character’s first and last name as match groups.

TipTips

Use the following hints to define your expressions:

• ^ = start of line
• $ = end of line
• \b = word boundary

NoteSolution

1. ^[A-Za-z0-9-]+
2. [A-za-z0-9-]+$
3. ^L[\w]+
4. (^[\w-]+)[ ]*([\w-]*), although this doesn’t work for characters with middle names.