Reg expression for finding expression in sentence

Question

I have a regular expression that match the string that contains the word "duration", followed by a < or > operator and then a number. Here is the expression:

duration\s*(<|>)\s*([0-9]+)

Is there any way I can make this expression better?

• Zack: Can you give some example input and output text?

Answer 1

Since you only have two characters to compete with, namely, < and >, use a character set. Other than that, you might consider \d matching your digits, instead of 0-9 as \d covers the numerical characters across the entire UTF8 range.

The final expression would be:

duration\s*([<>])\s*(\d+)

I've left the matching groups in place, considering that you might be referencing them in your later code.

Answer 2

Since you have only duration keyword after that either < or> sign & then the 1 or more numeric value then use below one regex which simple.

duration([<>])(\d+)

I removed the character which are not required.