CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
Nick Zuber
Nick Zuber

Reputation: 5637

JavaScript: Allow characters with Regex but exclude certain patterns of those characters

Is there a way to allow a certain range of characters, but also exclude certain patterns of these allowed characters?

For example, let's say you're searching for a range of letters:

[A-Za-z]

but you don't want to match a certain pattern of these accepted characters, for example:

abc

I've been trying to craft an expression for a while and have had no luck. What I've been able to come up with was:

([A-Za-z][^abc])*

But this doesn't provide the behavior I'm looking for. Is there a way to search a range of characters and exclude certain patters of the accepted characters?

EDIT

To clarify, I was wondering if I could be able to still match the characters besides the unaccepted pattern. For example, if we had:

SomeTextabcMoreText

and abc is an illegal pattern, is there a way to match the legal characters and yield some result similar to:

SomeText
MoreText

Upvotes: 0

Views: 56

Answers (2)

Neil Twist
Neil Twist

Reputation: 1159

I don't think that regexes are the right solution to this.

There are two option depending upon language:

  1. String.replace - If you're looking to just output the results.
  2. String.split if you're looking to tokenize the results.

$('#replace').text("SomeabcStringabcwithsomeabccharacters".replace(/abc/g, ""));
$('#split').text(JSON.stringify("SomeabcStringabcwithsomeabccharacters".split("abc")));
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id='replace'></div>
<div id='split'></div>

Upvotes: 1

Nick Zuber
Nick Zuber

Reputation: 5637

After taking a step back and analyzing my particular problem more, I realize that Regex wouldn't be the best way to solve this.

It would make more sense to parse the string using the illegal pattern as a delimiter:

var data = 'SomeTextabcMoreText';
var illegalPattern = 'abc';

console.log(data.split(illegalPattern)); // => ["SomeText", "MoreText"]

DEMO

Upvotes: 0

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