Tag: split

Split field to rows with lookahead regex

Given a HTML Text with alternating paragragraphs, where the second line actually belongs to a the first one:

<p>Simon Burger</p>
<p><a href="https://www.simonburger.com">Website SB</a></p>
<p>Petra Ohnsorg</p>
<p><a href="https://www.petraohnsorg.com">Website PO</a></p>

I want to split the text, so there’s a line for each person. This can be achieve by using a regex with a negative lookahead: 

<p>(?!<)

This only splits the first paragraph text when there is no following “<“

The fields of the so created rows can than be retrieved by using another regex:

Split first and lastname

For splitting a Name in First and Lastname I found the following simple Regex working in most cases:
(.*?)([^\s]*)$

Indeed you have to evaluate manually if you have names with more than 3 words

LASTNAME in Capitals + no speparation

In another case I came across a textline, where the firstname was in Capital, however the firstname was not easy seperable by the following words.

I found the the following Regex (including already the exceptions of the existing data) would work in most my cases:

^([A-ZÀÂÄÆÁÃÅĀÈÉÊËĘĖĒÎÏĪĮÍÌÔŌØÕÓÒÖŒÙÛÜŪÚŸÇĆČŃÑ\-'de]{2,20}\s(?:[A-ZÀÂÄÆÁÃÅĀÈÉÊËĘĖĒÎÏĪĮÍÌÔŌØÕÓÒÖŒÙÛÜŪÚŸÇĆČŃÑ\-']{2,15})?)\s*?([^\s]+\s(?:Huy|Christine|Flora|Deborah|Gösta)?)(.*)