ChatGPT to learn and create regex expressions

Question

I&rsquo;ve just tested ChatGPT to create a regex expression and it worked! 
 I asked ChatGPT: Whats the regex to match a string without the string hello ? 
 And the answer was: 
 ^(?!.*hello).*$ 
 with a helpful explanation: 
 
 Always take the answers from ChatGPT with a grain of salt, because they can be plain wrong, but I believe this tool can be a real helper to create regular expressions or AutoHotkey macros.

Paul · Answer

Jesús Prieto 
 Thanks for this. I moved your post into this forum I set up because AI is surely going to be a bigger topic as times go by. I also started by looking at AI for regex before I looked at anything more complex and in then end I found it harder to work with! 
 It's great for simple things, and also for many really complex things... but did find it often gets the syntax wrong and when I used t for more complex stuff it then becomes hard to identify where it slipped up. For example... I ask it this: 
 Provide a regular expression, using c# (.net) syntax, for use in a tool like notepad++. The expression should be able to take a number without thousands separators and correct it using a comma for the separator. If there is a period in the number this is the decimal place and the numbers after it should not be separated. 
 The response: 
 Here's a regular expression that matches numbers without thousands separators and adds a comma as a separator: 
 
 \b(\d{1,3})(?=(\d{3})+(?!\d))\b 
 To use it in Notepad++, follow these steps: 
 Open the Find and Replace dialog box by pressing Ctrl + H. In the "Find what" field, enter the regular expression above. In the "Replace with" field, enter "$1," (without the quotes). Check the "Regular expression" option. Click "Replace All" to replace all occurrences of the matched pattern with the corrected version. This regular expression uses a positive lookahead to find groups of three digits that are not followed by another digit. This ensures that only the thousands separators are added, and not the ones that are already part of the decimal portion of the number. The "\b" at the beginning and end of the expression ensure that only whole numbers are matched, and not parts of larger numbers. The "$1" in the replacement string refers to the first capturing group, which contains the three digits that are being separated by the comma. 
 Looks great... but it doesn't work. So I ask it to try a number: 
 
 That also doesn't work... 
 
 Neither does this... I can keep tying to get it to correct, provide hints etc. but I can never get it to correctly solve this task. It even provides expressions occasionally without escaping special characters and this also adds to the confusion. 
 So despite me believing AI definitely has a place as a tool to help with technical tasks, I don't think it's got there with regex yet. At least not for anything other than fairly straightforward requests. But it is fun trying!

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ChatGPT to learn and create regex expressions

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