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Regular Expressions Cookbook
book

Regular Expressions Cookbook

by Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan
May 2009
Intermediate to advanced
510 pages
15h
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Regular Expressions Cookbook

7.6. Validating URNs

Problem

You want to check whether a string represents a valid Uniform Resource Name (URN), as specified in RFC 2141, or find URNs in a larger body of text.

Solution

Check whether a string consists entirely of a valid URN:

\Aurn:
# Namespace Identifier
[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,31}:
# Namespace Specific String
[a-z0-9()+,\-.:=@;$_!*'%/?#]+
\Z
Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive
Regex flavors: .NET, Java, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby
^urn:[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,31}:[a-z0-9()+,\-.:=@;$_!*'%/?#]+$
Regex options: Case insensitive
Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python

Find a URN in a larger body of text:

\burn:
# Namespace Identifier
[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,31}:
# Namespace Specific String
[a-z0-9()+,\-.:=@;$_!*'%/?#]+
Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive
Regex flavors: .NET, Java, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby
\burn:[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,31}:[a-z0-9()+,\-.:=@;$_!*'%/?#]+
Regex options: Case insensitive
Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Find a URN in a larger body of text, assuming that punctuation at the end of the URN is part of the (English) text in which the URN is quoted rather than part of the URN itself:

\burn:
# Namespace Identifier
[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,31}:
# Namespace Specific String
[a-z0-9()+,\-.:=@;$_!*'%/?#]*[a-z0-9+=@$/]
Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive
Regex flavors: .NET, Java, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby
\burn:[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]{0,31}:[a-z0-9()+,\-.:=@;$_!*'%/?#]*[a-z0-9+=@$/]
Regex options: Case insensitive
Regex flavors: ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596802837Catalog PageErrata