CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvba
DaveU
DaveU

Reputation: 1082

leading space with regex match

A newbie to regex, I'm trying to skip the first set of brackets [word1], and match any remaining text bracketed with the open bracket and closing brace [...}

Text: [word1] This is a [word2]bk{not2} sentence [word3]bk{not3}

Pattern: [^\]]\[.*?\}

So what I want is to match [word2]bk{not2} and [word3]bk{not3}, and it works, kind of, but I'm ending up with a leading space on each of the matches. Been playing with this for a couple of days (and doing a lot of reading), but I'm obviously still missing something.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 116

Answers (2)

fliedonion
fliedonion

Reputation: 952

[^]] in your pattern match leading space. That matches any character without ].

For example, when text is [word1] This is a X[word2]bk{not2}, pattern [^\]]\[.*?\} matches X[word2]bk{not2}.

if any open brackets doesn't appear between [wordN} and {notN}, you can use:

\[[^\[}]*}

Or, you can also use Submatches with capturing groups.

Sub test()
    Dim objRE As Object
    Dim objMatch As Variant
    Dim objMatches As Object

    Dim strTest As String

    strTest = "[word1] This is a [word2]bk{not2} sentence [word3]bk{not3}"
    Set objRE = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")

    With objRE
        .Pattern = "[^\]](\[.*?\})"
        .Global = True
    End With

    Set objMatches = objRE.Execute(strTest)
    For Each objMatch In objMatches
        Debug.Print objMatch.Submatches(0)
    Next

    Set objMatch = Nothing
    Set objMatches = Nothing
    Set objRE = Nothing
End Sub

In this sample code, pattern has Parentheses for grouping.

Upvotes: 1

vks
vks

Reputation: 67978

\[[^} ]*}

Try this.See demo .

https://regex101.com/r/qJ8qW5/1

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions