RegEx for parsing chemical formulas
(PO4)2
really sits aside from all.
Let's start from simple, match items without parenthesis:
[A-Z][a-z]?\d*
Using regex above we can successfully parse Ag3PO4
, H2O
, CH3OOH
.
Then we need to somehow add expression for group. Group by itself can be matched using:
\(.*?\)\d+
So we add or
condition:
[A-Z][a-z]?\d*|\(.*?\)\d+
Demo
Which works for given cases. But may be you have some more samples.
Note: It will have problems with nested parenthesis. Ex. Co3(Fe(CN)6)2
If you want to handle that case, you can use the following regex:
[A-Z][a-z]?\d*|(?<!\([^)]*)\(.*\)\d+(?![^(]*\))
For Objective-C you can use the expression without lookarounds:
[A-Z][a-z]?\d*|\([^()]*(?:\(.*\))?[^()]*\)\d+
Demo
Or regex with repetitions (I don't know such formulas, but in case if there is anything like A(B(CD)3E(FG)4)5
- multiple parenthesis blocks inside one.
[A-Z][a-z]?\d*|\((?:[^()]*(?:\(.*\))?[^()]*)+\)\d+
Demo
This should just about work:
/(\(?)([A-Z])([a-z]*)([0-9]*)(\))?([0-9]*)/g
Play around with it here: http://refiddle.com/
When you encounter a parenthesis group, you don't want to parse what's inside, right?
If there are no nested parenthesis groups you can simply use
[A-Z][a-z]*\d*|\([^)]+\)\d*
\d
is a shorcut for [0-9]
, [^)]
means anything but a parenthesis.
See demo here.