Javascript Regex to select text between first colon and optionally either end of line or a second colon

Question

I've been having trouble writing a Regex to grab text starting with a colon and getting everything that follows along with optionally ending when another colon is found. It's for emoji markdown autocompletion. So typing

• ':smil' would yield 'smil'
• ':smile:some more text' would yield 'smile'

The expression I have now just grabs everything after the first colon:

const myRe = /\:(.*)$/g;
const result = myRe.exec(inputValue);

Answer 1

You can use this regex:

var re = /:([^:]*)/;

and grab captured group #1

RegEx Demo