https://regex101.com/r/sB9wW6/1
(?:(?<=\s)|^)#(\S+) <-- the problem in positive lookbehind
Working like this on prod: (?:\s|^)#(\S+), but I need a correct start index (without space).
Here is in JS:
var regex = new RegExp(/(?:(?<=\s)|^)#(\S+)/g);
Error parsing regular expression: Invalid regular expression:
/(?:(?<=\s)|^)#(\S+)/
What am I doing wrong?
UPDATE
Ok, no lookbehind in JS :(
But anyways, I need a regex to get the proper start and end index of my match. Without leading space.
Make sure you always select the right regex engine at regex101.com. See an issue that occurred due to using a JS-only compatible regex with [^] construct in Python.
JS regex - at the time of answering this question - did not support lookbehinds. Now, it becomes more and more adopted after its introduction in ECMAScript 2018. You do not really need it here since you can use capturing groups:
var re = /(?:\s|^)#(\S+)/g;
var str = 's #vln1\n#vln2\n';
var res = [];
while ((m = re.exec(str)) !== null) {
res.push(m[1]);
}
console.log(res);
The (?:\s|^)#(\S+) matches a whitespace or the start of string with (?:\s|^), then matches #, and then matches and captures into Group 1 one or more non-whitespace chars with (\S+).
To get the start/end indices, use
var re = /(\s|^)#\S+/g;
var str = 's #vln1\n#vln2\n';
var pos = [];
while ((m = re.exec(str)) !== null) {
pos.push([m.index+m[1].length, m.index+m[0].length]);
}
console.log(pos);
BONUS
My regex works at regex101.com, but not in...
First of all, have you checked the Code Generator link in the Tools pane on the left?
All languages - "Literal string" vs. "String literal" alert - Make sure you test against the same text used in code, literal string, at the regex tester. A common scenario is copy/pasting a string literal value directly into the test string field, with all string escape sequences like \n (line feed char), \r (carriage return), \t (tab char). See Regex_search c++, for example. Mind that they must be replaced with their literal counterparts. So, if you have in Python text = "Text\n\n abc", you must use Text, two line breaks, abc in the regex tester text field. Text.*?abc will never match it although you might think it "works". Yes, . does not always match line break chars, see How do I match any character across multiple lines in a regular expression?
All languages - Backslash alert - Make sure you correctly use a backslash in your string literal, in most languages, in regular string literals, use double backslash, i.e. \d used at regex101.com must written as \\d. In raw string literals, use a single backslash, same as at regex101. Escaping word boundary is very important, since, in many languages (C#, Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, etc.), "\b" is used to define a BACKSPACE char, i.e. it is a valid string escape sequence. PHP does not support \b string escape sequence, so "/\b/" = '/\b/' there.
All languages - Default flags - Global and Multiline - Note that by default m and g flags are enabled at regex101.com. So, if you use ^ and $, they will match at the start and end of lines correspondingly. If you need the same behavior in your code check how multiline mode is implemented and either use a specific flag, or - if supported - use an inline (?m) embedded (inline) modifier. The g flag enables multiple occurrence matching, it is often implemented using specific functions/methods. Check your language reference to find the appropriate one.
line-breaks - Line endings at regex101.com are LF only, you can't test strings with CRLF endings, see regex101.com VS myserver - different results. Solutions can be different for each regex library: either use \R (PCRE, Java, Ruby) or some kind of \v (Boost, PCRE), \r?\n, (?:\r\n?|\n)/(?>\r\n?|\n) (good for .NET) or [\r\n]+ in other libraries (see answers for C#, PHP). Another issue related to the fact that you test your regex against a multiline string (not a list of standalone strings/lines) is that your patterns may consume the end of line, \n, char with negated character classes, see an issue like that. \D matched the end of line char, and in order to avoid it, [^\d\n] could be used, or other alternatives.
php - You are dealing with Unicode strings, or want shorthand character classes to match Unicode characters, too (e.g. \w+ to match Стрибижев or Stribiżew, or \s+ to match hard spaces), then you need to use u modifier, see preg_match() returns 0 although regex testers work - To match all occurrences, use preg_match_all, not preg_match with /...pattern.../g, see PHP preg_match to find multiple occurrences and "Unknown modifier 'g' in..." when using preg_match in PHP?- Your regex with inline backreference like \1 refuses to work? Are you using a double quoted string literal? Use a single-quoted one, see Backreference does not work in PHP
phplaravel - Mind you need the regex delimiters around the pattern, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22430529
python - Note that re.search, re.match, re.fullmatch, re.findall and re.finditer accept the regex as the first argument, and the input string as the second argument. Not re.findall("test 200 300", r"\d+"), but re.findall(r"\d+", "test 200 300"). If you test at regex101.com, please check the "Code Generator" page. - You used re.match that only searches for a match at the start of the string, use re.search: Regex works fine on Pythex, but not in Python - If the regex contains capturing group(s), re.findall returns a list of captures/capture tuples. Either use non-capturing groups, or re.finditer, or remove redundant capturing groups, see re.findall behaves weird - If you used ^ in the pattern to denote start of a line, not start of the whole string, or used $ to denote the end of a line and not a string, pass re.M or re.MULTILINE flag to re method, see Using ^ to match beginning of line in Python regex
- If you try to match some text across multiple lines, and use re.DOTALL or re.S, or [\s\S]* / [\s\S]*?, and still nothing works, check if you read the file line by line, say, with for line in file:. You must pass the whole file contents as the input to the regex method, see Getting Everything Between Two Characters Across New Lines. - Having trouble adding flags to regex and trying something like pattern = r"/abc/gi"? See How to add modifers to regex in python?
c#, .net - .NET regex does not support possessive quantifiers like ++, *+, ??, {1,10}?, see .NET regex matching digits between optional text with possessive quantifer is not working - When you match against a multiline string and use RegexOptions.Multiline option (or inline (?m) modifier) with an $ anchor in the pattern to match entire lines, and get no match in code, you need to add \r? before $, see .Net regex matching $ with the end of the string and not of line, even with multiline enabled - To get multiple matches, use Regex.Matches, not Regex.Match, see RegEx Match multiple times in string - Similar case as above: splitting a string into paragraphs, by a double line break sequence - C# / Regex Pattern works in online testing, but not at runtime - You should remove regex delimiters, i.e. #"/\d+/" must actually look like #"\d+", see Simple and tested online regex containing regex delimiters does not work in C# code - If you unnecessarily used Regex.Escape to escape all characters in a regular expression (like Regex.Escape(#"\d+\.\d+")) you need to remove Regex.Escape, see Regular Expression working in regex tester, but not in c#
dartflutter - Use raw string literal, RegExp(r"\d"), or double backslashes (RegExp("\\d")) - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59085824
javascript - Double escape backslashes in a RegExp("\\d"): Why do regex constructors need to be double escaped?
- (Negative) lookbehinds unsupported by most browsers: Regex works on browser but not in Node.js - Strings are immutable, assign the .replace result to a var - The .replace() method does change the string in place - Retrieve all matches with str.match(/pat/g) - Regex101 and Js regex search showing different results or, with RegExp#exec, RegEx to extract all matches from string using RegExp.exec- Replace all pattern matches in string: Why does javascript replace only first instance when using replace?
javascriptangular - Double the backslashes if you define a regex with a string literal, or just use a regex literal notation, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56097782
java - Word boundary not working? Make sure you use double backslashes, "\\b", see Regex \b word boundary not works - Getting invalid escape sequence exception? Same thing, double backslashes - Java doesn't work with regex \s, says: invalid escape sequence - No match found is bugging you? Run Matcher.find() / Matcher.matches() - Why does my regex work on RegexPlanet and regex101 but not in my code? - .matches() requires a full string match, use .find(): Java Regex pattern that matches in any online tester but doesn't in Eclipse - Access groups using matcher.group(x): Regex not working in Java while working otherwise - Inside a character class, both [ and ] must be escaped - Using square brackets inside character class in Java regex - You should not run matcher.matches() and matcher.find() consecutively, use only if (matcher.matches()) {...} to check if the pattern matches the whole string and then act accordingly, or use if (matcher.find()) to check if there is a single match or while (matcher.find()) to find multiple matches (or Matcher#results()). See Why does my regex work on RegexPlanet and regex101 but not in my code?
scala - Your regex attempts to match several lines, but you read the file line by line (e.g. use for (line <- fSource.getLines))? Read it into a single variable (see matching new line in Scala regex, when reading from file)
kotlin - You have Regex("/^\\d+$/")? Remove the outer slashes, they are regex delimiter chars that are not part of a pattern. See Find one or more word in string using Regex in Kotlin - You expect a partial string match, but .matchEntire requires a full string match? Use .find, see Regex doesn't match in Kotlin
mongodb - Do not enclose /.../ with single/double quotation marks, see mongodb regex doesn't work
c++ - regex_match requires a full string match, use regex_search to find a partial match - Regex not working as expected with C++ regex_match - regex_search finds the first match only. Use sregex_token_iterator or sregex_iterator to get all matches: see What does std::match_results::size return? - When you read a user-defined string using std::string input; std::cin >> input;, note that cin will only get to the first whitespace, to read the whole line properly, use std::getline(std::cin, input); - C++ Regex to match '+' quantifier - "\d" does not work, you need to use "\\d" or R"(\d)" (a raw string literal) - This regex doesn't work in c++ - Make sure the regex is tested against a literal text, not a string literal, see Regex_search c++
go - Double backslashes or use a raw string literal: Regular expression doesn't work in Go - Go regex does not support lookarounds, select the right option (Go) at regex101.com before testing! Regex expression negated set not working golang
groovy - Return all matches: Regex that works on regex101 does not work in Groovy
r - Double escape backslashes in the string literal: "'\w' is an unrecognized escape" in grep - Use perl=TRUE to PCRE engine ((g)sub/(g)regexpr): Why is this regex using lookbehinds invalid in R?
oracle - Greediness of all quantifiers is set by the first quantifier in the regex, see Regex101 vs Oracle Regex (then, you need to make all the quantifiers as greedy as the first one)] - \b does not work? Oracle regex does not support word boundaries at all, use workarounds as shown in Regex matching works on regex tester but not in oracle
firebase - Double escape backslashes, make sure ^ only appears at the start of the pattern and $ is located only at the end (if any), and note you cannot use more than 9 inline backreferences: Firebase Rules Regex Birthday
firebasegoogle-cloud-firestore - In Firestore security rules, the regular expression needs to be passed as a string, which also means it shouldn't be wrapped in / symbols, i.e. use allow create: if docId.matches("^\\d+$").... See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63243300
google-data-studio - /pattern/g in REGEXP_REPLACE must contain no / regex delimiters and flags (like g) - see How to use Regex to replace square brackets from date field in Google Data Studio?
google-sheets - If you think REGEXEXTRACT does not return full matches, truncates the results, you should check if you have redundant capturing groups in your regex and remove them, or convert the capturing groups to non-capturing by add ?: after the opening (, see Extract url domain root in Google Sheet
sed - Why does my regular expression work in X but not in Y?
word-boundarypcrephp - [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] do not work in the regex tester, although they are valid constructs in PCRE, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48670105
snowflake-cloud-data-platform snowflake-sql - If you are writing a stored procedure, and \\d does not work, you need to double them again and use \\\\d, see REGEX conversion of VARCHAR value to DATE in Snowflake stored procedure using RLIKE not consistent.
I have searched through some questions but couldn't find the exact answer i am looking for.
I have a requirement to search through large strings of text looking for keywords matches. I was using IndexOf, however, i require to find whole word matches e.g. if i search for Java, but the text contains JavaScript, it shouldn't match. This works fine using \b{pattern}\b, but if i search for something like C#, then it doesn't work.
Below is a few examples of text strings that i am searching through:
languages include Java,JavaScript,MySql,C#
languages include Java/JavaScript/MySql/C#
languages include Java, JavaScript, MySql, C#
Obviously the issue is with the special character '#'; so this also doesn't work when searching for C++.
Escape the pattern using Regex.Escape and replace the context-dependent \b word boundaries with (?<!\w) / (?!\w) lookarounds:
var rx = $#"(?<!\w){Regex.Escape(pattern)}(?!\w)";
The (?<!\w) is a negative lookbehind that fails the match if there is a start of string or a non-word char immediately before the current location, and (?!\w) is a negative looahead that fails the match if there is an end of string or a non-word char immediately after the current location.
Yeah, this is because there isn't a word boundary (a \b) after the #, because # isn't a "word" character. You could use a regular expression like the following, which searches for a character that isn't a part of a language name [^a-zA-Z+#] after the language:
\b{pattern}[^a-zA-Z+#]
Or, if you believe you can list all of the possible characters that aren't part of a language name (for example, whitespace, ,, ., and ;):
[\s,.;]{pattern}[\s,.;]
Alternately, if it is possible that a language name is at the very end of a string (depending on what you're getting the data from), you might need to also match the end of the string $ in addition to the separators, or similarly, the beginning of the string ^.
[\s,.;]{pattern}(?:[\s,.;]|$)
I want to find the href from an achore tag. So I have used regex as
<a\s*[^>]*\s*href\s*\=\s*([^(\s*|\>)]*)\s*[^>]*>\s*Text\s*<\/a>
Options = Ignorecase + singleline
Example
Text
So Group[1]="/abc/xzy/pqr.com"
But If the content is like
<a href="/abc/xzy/ //Contains new line
pqr.com" class="m">Text</a>
so Group[1]="/abc/xzy/
So I want to know how to get "/abc/xzy/pqr.com" if the content contains new line(\r\n)
Your capture group is a bit weird: [^(\s*|\>)]* is a character class and it will match any character not (, ror a character class \s, nor an asterisk *, etc.
What you can do however is to put quotes before and after the capture group:
<a\s*[^>]*\s*href\s*\=\s*"([^(\s*|\>)]*)"\s*[^>]*>\s*Text\s*<\/a>
^ ^
And then change the character class to [^"] (not quotes):
<a\s*[^>]*\s*href\s*\=\s*"([^"]*)"\s*[^>]*>\s*Text\s*<\/a>
^^^^
regex101 demo.
This said, it would be better to use a proper html parser instead of regex. It's just that it's more tedious to make a suitable regex because you can forget about a lot of different scenarios, but if you're certain of how your data comes through, regex might be a quick way to get what you need.
If you want to consider single quotes and no quotes at all in some cases, you might try this instead:
<a\s*[^>]*\s*href\s*=\s*((?:[^ ]|[\n\r])+)\s*[^>]*>\s*Text\s*<\/a>
Updated regex101.
This regex has this part instead (?:[^ ]|[\n\r])+ which accepts non-spaces and newlines (and carriage returns just in case). Note that \s contains white spaces, tabs, newlines and form-feed.
I am converting some code from Perl into .NET. I have this s/// pattern replacement:
$text =~ s/\Q\1\E"/$1/gi;
I use the Perl \Q and \E to escape the text I am matching in the first capture, the URL portion of an HREF attribute.
How do I do the same thing in .NET? I've read about using Regex.Escape() to escape text for a regular expression, but how can I use it WITHIN the regular expression that is performing the match? (Or do I even need to do that?)
So right now I'm not doing anything special, and wondering if this will continue to work as well as my Perl regex has been:
text = Regex.Replace(text, #"\1", "$1", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
You don't need the \Q...\E in the Perl. In fact, it will keep your Perl from working, because it means the '\1' is taken literally instead of being replaced with the contents of the first match.
\Q...\E is for quoting characters that are special in a regex. The string replaced with a backreference is already taken literally, not re-evaluated as regular expression syntax.
The same goes for anything inserted into the replacement string. You only need \Q...\E, or Regex.Escape(), if you have a variable from outside of regex-land with text that you want to interpolate into a regular expression, without accidentally treating parts of it as a regular expression metacharacters.
example strings
785*()&!~`a
##$%$~2343
455frt&*&*
i want to capture the first and the third but not the second since it doesnt contain any alphabet character plz help
In fact, I think [a-zA-Z] might suffice to match your strings.
To capture the whole thing, try: ^.*[a-zA-Z].*$
Here is one possible way:
.*[a-zA-Z]+
You should maybe clarify a bit what you mean by 'catpuring': do you want the whole string of just the ascii bits?
Also, you don't say if it should match just plain Roman alphabet (A to Z) or if it should also match Unicode chars to match strings in other languages.
If you just need to test your string, in C# you would do:
bool matching = Regex.IsMatch(myString, "[a-zA-Z]");
You wouldn't need anything else, since just one letter anywhere in the myString string will match (according to your definition).
This is my favorite RegEx testing site: Javascript Regexp Tester and Cheat Sheet
If you want to match all letters (including non-ascii ones), use p{L} instead of [a-zA-Z]. See Unicode categories.