Understanding REGEX expression with groups in SQL query

Question

I am currently debugging an old script and trying to understand a regex in an SQL query.

What would be the result of this search?

[...] REGEXP '(^| |"|\\()ORDER(-| )[[:digit:]]{3}';

It's the same as `(^|[ "(])ORDER[- ]\d{3}`; It's matching any string that either starts with ORDER or contains the word ORDER after a space, `"` or `(`; and is followed by either `-` or a space and then 3 digits. — ctwheels, Dec 03 '19 at 22:06
Does this answer your question? [Learning Regular Expressions](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4736/learning-regular-expressions) — ctwheels, Dec 03 '19 at 22:08
Does this answer your question? [Reference - What does this regex mean?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22937618/reference-what-does-this-regex-mean) — Nick, Dec 03 '19 at 22:13

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 03 '19 at 22:07

2

Here is a part by part explanation:

(^| |"|\\(): either the beginning of the string (^), or a space, or a double quote, or an opening parenthese (this character needs to be escaped because it is meaningful in regexes)
ORDER: the word "ORDER"
(-| ): either a dash or a space
[[:digit:]]{3}: a sequence of 3 consecutive digits (between 0 and 9)

answered Dec 03 '19 at 22:07

GMB

Please elaborate on the anonymous downvote: what is wrong with this accepted answer? – GMB Dec 03 '19 at 23:48

1 Answers1