CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
bernie2436
bernie2436

Reputation: 23941

Regex for a string of capitalized words?

I want to write a regex that will pull out the phrases of capitalized [a-z] words. So if it sees this phrase it should pull out "America Fremerica" and "King" from

there is a land called America Fremerica where regex is King

I have a regex ([A-Z][a-z]+ ?){1,} that pulls out Fremerica and King.

I want it to pick out America Fremerica. Why doesn't it pick out America? Is that why it does not pick out the phrase?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 263

Answers (3)

Bohemian
Bohemian

Reputation: 425448

Your regex captures the trailing space. This regex captures a capitalized word followed by 0-n more such words (either as the whole match or group 1 - they are the same), which captures just "America Fremerica" (not "America Fremerica ")

([A-Z][a-z]+(?: [A-Z][a-z]+)*)

See a live demo

Upvotes: 1

John Kugelman
John Kugelman

Reputation: 362197

Your regex works, but it's not capturing all of the words. The regex (a)+ will match the string aaa but it will only capture the last a. To capture all three as you'd need to write (a+) with the wildcard inside the parentheses.

So put another set of parentheses around the whole thing. You want to capture the repetitions. You can also change {1,} to +, which is equivalent.

((?:[A-Z][a-z]+ ?)+)

?: stops the inner set of parentheses from being a capture group. It's not necessary, but it's nice to have.

Upvotes: 3

nibblonian
nibblonian

Reputation: 88

It appears to work as expected in Javascript. See this fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/9X83F/2/

HTML

<p id="result"></p>

Javascript

var phrase = "there is a land called America Fremerica where regex is King";
var matches = phrase.match(/([A-Z][a-z]+ ?){1,}/g);

document.getElementById('result').innerHTML = matches;

Upvotes: 0

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