Using regex to add leading zeroes

Using c#:

string result = Regex.Replace(input, @"\d+", me =>
{
    return int.Parse(me.Value).ToString("0000");
});

A sample:

>>> re.sub("(?<!\d)0*(\d{1,3})(?!\d)","000\\1","/2009/5/song 01 of 3")
'/2009/0005/song 0001 of 0003'

Note:

• It only works for numbers 1 - 9 for now
• It is not well test yet

I can't think of a single regex without using callbacks for now* (there might be a way to do it).

Here are two regular expression to process that:

>>> x = "1/2009/5/song 01 of 3 10 100 010 120 1200 abcd"
>>>
>>> x = re.sub("(?<!\d)0*(\d{1,3})(?!\d)","000\\1",x)
#'0001/2009/0005/song 0001 of 0003 00010 000100 00010 000120 1200 abcd'
>>>
>>> re.sub("0+(\d{4})(?!\d)","\\1",x) #strip extra leading zeroes
'0001/2009/0005/song 0001 of 0003 0010 0100 0010 0120 1200 abcd'

Use something that supports a callback so you can process the match:

>>> r=re.compile(r'(?:^|(?<=[^0-9]))([0-9]{1,3})(?=$|[^0-9])')
>>> r.sub(lambda x: '%04d' % (int(x.group(1)),), 'dfbg345gf345', sys.maxint)
'dfbg0345gf0345'
>>> r.sub(lambda x: '%04d' % (int(x.group(1)),), '1x11x111x', sys.maxint)
'0001x0011x0111x'
>>> r.sub(lambda x: '%04d' % (int(x.group(1)),), 'x1x11x111x', sys.maxint)
'x0001x0011x0111x'

In Perl:

s/([0-9]+)/sprintf('%04d',$1)/ge;