Ken Dale IV / www.kennydiv.com

Interesting chunks of code in various languages that I've written or found that I use often and were difficult issues or hard to find. Hopefully they will help you too!

Regular Expressions

Letters, numbers and hyphens:
([A-Za-z0-9-]+)

Date (3/21/2007):
(\d{1,2}\/\d{1,2}\/\d{4})

jpg, gif, or png image:
([^\s]+(?=\.(jpg|gif|png))\.\2)

Any number from 1-50 inclusive:
(^[1-9]{1}$|^[1-4]{1}[0-9]{1}$|^50$)

Valid hex color code:
(#?([A-Fa-f0-9]){3}(([A-Fa-f0-9]){3})?)

String with 1 lowercase, 1 uppercase, 1 number:
((?=.*\d)(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z]).{8,15})

Email addresses (doesn't validate suffix, only syntax):
(\w+@[a-zA-Z_]+?\.[a-zA-Z]{2,6})

HTML tags (useful to strip code from content):
(\<(/?[^\>]+)\>)

T-SQL Search All Tables Procedure (hilarious!)

-- Source: http://www.users.drew.edu/skass/sql/SearchAllTables.sql.txt

SET NOCOUNT ON
DECLARE @Missing varchar(100)
SET @Missing = 'abc'
--Searches for 'abc' 

SELECT Haystack = TABLE_NAME
INTO Pitchfork
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'

SELECT Haystack, COLUMN_NAME AS Needle
INTO Iowa
FROM Pitchfork JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
ON TABLE_NAME = Haystack
AND DATA_TYPE LIKE '%char'

CREATE TABLE PigsEar (SilkPurse varchar(1000))

DECLARE @FarmQuery varchar(1000)
SET @FarmQuery =
  'INSERT INTO PigsEar SELECT TOP 1 SilkPurse=''Found ' +
REPLACE(@Missing,'''','''''') + ' in HAYSTACK.NEEDLE'' FROM HAYSTACK WHERE ' +
'NEEDLE = ' + QUOTENAME(@Missing,'''')
--if you need find the string as a substring of a column value, change
--the above line to
--'NEEDLE LIKE ' + QUOTENAME('%'+@Missing+'%','''')
--Leave it as is if you want to find the string as an exact match of a
--column value.

DECLARE @Murderer varchar(1000)

DECLARE @Haystack sysname
DECLARE @Needle sysname

DECLARE Investigation CURSOR FOR
SELECT Needle, Haystack FROM Iowa
WHERE Haystack <> 'Pitchfork'

OPEN Investigation

DECLARE @Miracle int

FETCH NEXT FROM Investigation INTO @Needle,@Haystack
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 BEGIN
  SET @Murderer =
REPLACE(REPLACE(@FarmQuery,'NEEDLE',quotename(@Needle)),
                'HAYSTACK',quotename(@Haystack))
  exec (@Murderer)
  SELECT @Miracle = COUNT(SilkPurse) FROM PigsEar
  FETCH NEXT FROM Investigation INTO @Needle,@Haystack
END

IF @Miracle IS NULL
  PRINT '['+@Missing+'] not found'
ELSE
  SELECT SilkPurse FROM PigsEar

DEALLOCATE Investigation
go

DROP TABLE Pitchfork
DROP TABLE Iowa
DROP TABLE PigsEar

ActionScript3 Embed External SWF at Compile Time

//I use this in Flex, but you probably can in an AS3 .fla as well!
[Embed(source=”external.swf”, mimeType=”application/octet-stream”)]
private var ExternalSWF:Class;

var externalSWFBytes :ByteArray = (new ExternalSwf() as ByteArray);
var l :Loader = new Loader();
l.loadBytes(ExternalSwf, new LoaderContext(false, ApplicationDomain.currentDomain));

var something:DisplayObject = l content;
l.addChild(something);

Ken Dale IV

Personal, Personal, and Beyond

Regular Expressions

T-SQL Search All Tables Procedure (hilarious!)

ActionScript3 Embed External SWF at Compile Time