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dateduplicateslua-patterns

LUA patterns to detect matching date

I struggling to find the correct LUA code to detect if two dates appear after each other.

I have something similar which detects two keywords, but it's not working on my dates.

Here's the LUA code I have so far:

(%a+) %- %1$

Cheers,

Solution

  • Your main trouble here is that you want to match a date like 2017-03-19 with %a+ pattern. %a matches a letter, %a+ matches 1 or more letters.

    You need to replace this pattern with a more precise one, like %d+%-%d+%-%d+ or %d%d%d%d%-%d%d%-%d%d:

    '(%d+%-%d+%-%d+) %- %1'

    where %d matches a digit.

    Now, if you want to match a whole string like this, you need to enclose the pattern with ^ and $ anchors.

    '^(%d+%-%d+%-%d+) %- %1$'

    If you want to add word boundaries, 

     '%f[%d](%d+%-%d+%-%d+) %- %1%f[%D]'