Regex for parsing directory and filename

Question

I\'m trying to write a regex that will parse out the directory and filename of a fully qualified path using matching groups.

so...

/         


        

Answer 1

In languages that support regular expressions with non-capturing groups:

((?:[^/]*/)*)(.*)

I'll explain the gnarly regex by exploding it...

(
  (?:
    [^/]*
    /
  )
  *
)
(.*)

What the parts mean:

(  -- capture group 1 starts
  (?:  -- non-capturing group starts
    [^/]*  -- greedily match as many non-directory separators as possible
    /  -- match a single directory-separator character
  )  -- non-capturing group ends
  *  -- repeat the non-capturing group zero-or-more times
)  -- capture group 1 ends
(.*)  -- capture all remaining characters in group 2

Example

To test the regular expression, I used the following Perl script...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;

sub test {
  my $str = shift;
  my $testname = shift;

  $str =~ m#((?:[^/]*/)*)(.*)#;

  print "$str -- $testname\n";
  print "  1: $1\n";
  print "  2: $2\n\n";
}

test('/var/log/xyz/10032008.log', 'absolute path');
test('var/log/xyz/10032008.log', 'relative path');
test('10032008.log', 'filename-only');
test('/10032008.log', 'file directly under root');

The output of the script...

/var/log/xyz/10032008.log -- absolute path
  1: /var/log/xyz/
  2: 10032008.log

var/log/xyz/10032008.log -- relative path
  1: var/log/xyz/
  2: 10032008.log

10032008.log -- filename-only
  1:
  2: 10032008.log

/10032008.log -- file directly under root
  1: /
  2: 10032008.log