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Regex to identify illegal characters in a perso-arabic database

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# 1  
Old 08-26-2017
Regex to identify illegal characters in a perso-arabic database
I am working on Sindhi: a perso-Arabic script and since it shares the Unicode-block with over 400 other languages, quite often the database contains characters which are not wanted: illegal characters.
I have identified the character set of Sindhi which is given below:
For clarity's sake, each character is demarcated by an apostrophe followed by a comma
Code:
['ا','ب','ٻ','پ','ڀ','ت','ٺ','ٽ','ث','ٿ','ف','ڦ','گ','ڳ','ڱ','ک','ي','د','ذ','ڌ','ڏ','ڊ','ڍ','ح','ج','ڄ','ڃ','چ','ڇ','خ','ع','غ','ر','ڙ','م','ن','ل','س','ش','و','ق','ص','ض','ڻ','ط','ظ','ھ','جھ','گھ','ڪ','ء','ه','آ']

I wrote a regex in Unix to identify all words where the Sindhi character set does not exist.
Code:
^[^ابٻپڀتٺٽثٿفڦگڳڱکيدذڌڏڊڍحجڄڃچڇخعغرڙمنلسشوقصضڻطظھجھگھڪءهآ]+$

The syntax being: find all strings where the given characters are not found.
However the regex does not work. What went wrong? Do I need to put a comma after every character ?
I am giving below a small sample database where there are words having both legal and illegal characters
Code:
آبادلاهورپشاورڪوئٽه
اپریل
ای
ایڈریس
بيورو
جائے
جنوری
جوابدارشاهد
خانوں
دتجايا
دیں
روحناي
سنڌسماءَچار
سے
ضروری
فروری
مئی
منقتل
میل
نيشنلاسلام
ویب*
پاڪستانسنڌمقامي
پوڻان
ڊ
کریں
کیا
ڪراچي-حيدرآباد
گرميت
گھنٹے
گیا

Any help given would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance
# 2  
Old 08-26-2017
Try egrep or equivalent (extended regex or pcre), use alternation. I am not going to change locale here so example:
Code:
if [  grep -e  '(a|b|c|d|e|f)' $search_string ] ; then
  echo 'bad character'
fi

Where a b c d e f are each a bad character so presence of any or all is a bad character error.
# 3  
Old 08-26-2017
Hi gimley,
Your problem statement is not clear to me. Are you trying to identify a file that only contains Sindhi characters (plus <newline> characters), a file that contains one or more characters that are not Sindhi characters and not <newline> characters, a list of lines that only contains Sindhi characters (plus <newline> characters), a list of lines that contains one or more characters that are not Sindhi characters and not <newline> characters, a list of words that only contains Sindhi characters, or a list of words that contains one or more characters that are not Sindhi characters.

Hi Jim,
The standard way to invoke grep with an ERE is:
Code:
grep -E 'extended_regular_expression' file_pathname

not:
Code:
grep -e 'extended_regular_expression' string_to_be_matched

# 4  
Old 08-26-2017
Wildly guessing on what your after, regretting that there's no output sample to test against, and hoping that UTF-8 will cover all your needs and will be correctly handled by the tools, I came up with

Code:
echo "[^'ا','ب','ٻ','پ','ڀ','ت','ٺ','ٽ','ث','ٿ','ف','ڦ','گ','ڳ','ڱ','ک','ي','د','ذ','ڌ','ڏ','ڊ','ڍ','ح','ج','ڄ','ڃ','چ','ڇ','خ','ع','غ','ر','ڙ','م','ن','ل','س','ش','و','ق','ص','ض','ڻ','ط','ظ','ھ','جھ','گھ','ڪ','ء','ه','آ']" | tr -d "'," | grep -f- file

, which greatly reduces the file's line count (i.e. identifies lines with non-Sindhi chars, lets all-Sindhi lines pass), as does
Code:
grep "[^ابٻپڀتٺٽثٿفڦگڳڱکيدذڌڏڊڍحجڄڃچڇخعغرڙمنلسشوقصضڻطظھجھگھڪءهآ]" file

Is that close to what you need?

If there are "illegal" (why illegal, by the way?) characters in the DB, someone must have put them in. Mayhap an upfront discriminator would be helpful here?
Last edited by RudiC; 08-26-2017 at 05:35 AM..
# 5  
Old 08-26-2017
The + special meaning is in ERE that is grep -E or egrep.
Also you have a ^ negation too many.
Code:
egrep '^[ابٻپڀتٺٽثٿفڦگڳڱکيدذڌڏڊڍحجڄڃچڇخعغرڙمنلسشوقصضڻطظھجھگھڪءهآ]+$'

# 6  
Old 08-27-2017
Sorry for the delay in responding but I was unwell and could not respond. I would like to thank all who took the trouble to answer my query.
The issue is that the Arabic code block is huge and has characters that look alike. Very often data entry operators use a character /characters which are not part of the character set of a language [in this case Sindhi] and these are what we term as illegal. When these invalid/illegal characters are part of a dictionary, the results are disastrous, especially in storage and Natural Language processing.
This is the reason of my query, I tried the solutions provided and they all work and I am really thankful to all for your help.
Why I needed a simple regex was that my text processors: Ultraedit and Notepad++ both support regexes in perl and Unix and instead of "grepping" the strings, a macro based on a regex would help me identify all such invalid strings. I am still curious why the regex did not work. Any light on the same would really help.
Many thanks once again.
# 7  
Old 08-27-2017
As I said, if a-z are allowed then you need
^[a-z]+$ (or [^a-z]ensure all are allowed, or there is not any illegal)
but not ^[^a-z]+$ (ensure there is only illegal)
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