CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
ragebiswas
ragebiswas

Reputation: 3878

Javascript regex for matching twitter-like hashtags

I'd like some help on figuring out the JS regex to use to identify "hashtags", where they should match all of the following:

  1. The usual twitter style hashtags: #foobar
  2. Hashtags with text preceding: abc123#xyz456
  3. Hashtags with space in them, which are denoted as: #[foo bar] (that is, the [] serves as delimiter for the hashtag)

For 1 and 2, I was using something of the following form:

var all_re =/\S*#\S+/gi;

I can't seem to figure out how to extend it to 3. I'm not good at regexps, some help please?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 8

Views: 15528

Answers (3)

Martin Josefsson
Martin Josefsson

Reputation: 1083

I had a similar problem, but only want to match when a string starts and ends with the hashtag. So similar problem, hopefully someone else can have use of my solution.

This one matches "#myhashtag" but not "gfd#myhashtag" or "#myhashtag ".

/^#\S+$/

^ #start of regex
\S #Any char that is not a white space
+ #Any number of said char
$ #End of string

Simple as that.

Upvotes: 0

Felix Kling
Felix Kling

Reputation: 816442

So it has to match either all non-space characters or any characters between (and including) [ and ]:

\S*#(?:\[[^\]]+\]|\S+)

Explanation:

\S*                # any number of non-white space characters
#                  # matches #
(?:                # start non-capturing group
    \[             # matches [
    [^\]]+         # any character but ], one or more
    \]             # matches ]
    |              # OR
    \S+            # one or more non-white space characters
)                  # end non-capturing group

Reference: alternation, negated character classes.

Upvotes: 31

xiaowl
xiaowl

Reputation: 5207

How about this?

var all_re =/(\S*#\[[^\]]+\])|(\S*#\S+)/gi;

Upvotes: 2

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