CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregexexpression
Debaditya
Debaditya

Reputation: 2497

regex : Parse a sentence

Use case

Prepare a regex which can match 1 or 2 words after 'sell|sold|selling' and matches the variable "product"

Example

Sentence - "John wants to sell 200$ XYZ laptop and buy ABC PC"

if product = "ABC" , then it should not match

If product = "XYZ" , then it should match

What I did (javascript)

var desc = "John wants to sell 200$ XYZ laptop and buy ABC PC"
var product = "ABC"

var reg_s="sell\|selling\|sold (.*)" + product;
var re_s= new RegExp(reg_s,'gi');
var sell = desc.match(re_s);

In the above code , the whole string after 'sell' is getting matched - but it should not match for ABC. Need to match only those products which appear 1,2 words after sell|sold|selling. For eg: product = XYZ should match

I am new to regex and learning the same. Need your suggestion.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 222

Answers (1)

paxdiablo
paxdiablo

Reputation: 882466

Your (.*) segment in the regex will indeed match the rest of the string because . basically means any character. If you only want to get the next two "words", you need to limit the capture with something like:

(\S+)\s*(\S*)

This would give you two capture groups, one for each of the (up to) two words following the fixed string.

Further on that, I'd suggest using the following as a baseline:

var desc = "John wants to sell 200$ XYZ laptop and buy ABC PC";
var product = "ABC";

var reg_s="(sell|sold|selling)\\s+(\\S*\\s*\\S*)";
var re_s= new RegExp(reg_s,'gi');
var sell = re_s.exec(desc);
alert(sell[2]);

This gives you an actual array of captured groups whereas the array given to you by string.match will be an array of strings without the individual capture groups split up.

Upvotes: 2

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