On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 12:34 AM Michael Orlitzky <m...@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 1/21/19 9:55 PM, David Haller wrote:
> >
> > $ printf '0.1.2.3 01.2.3.4 1.2.3.0 1.2.000.3\n' | \
> >      sed 's/0*\([[:digit:]]\+\)/\1/g'
> > 0.1.2.3 1.2.3.4 1.2.3.0 1.2.0.3
> >
>
> There are actually more than four examples that it needs to work on. And
> more to the point, this is going to destroy any other numbers it finds
> in the input. Phone numbers, zip codes, addresses, credit cards numbers,
> timestamps, etc. will all get clobbered. It takes like 10 lines of
> python to do this right; it's silly to invest a ton of effort trying to
> come up with a regex solution that accidentally works.
>
>
Thanks Michael. The input data is constrained in ways I didnt list, so it
might be possible to get away with a regex, but I appreciate you
highlighting the risk of what sounds like a brittle approach.

I am hopeful that one day learning python will make it to the top of my
priority list.

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