CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregexmatch
VicVer
VicVer

Reputation: 153

RegEx trying to match anything but a certain pattern with chars from the pattern being allowed

In this case I am trying to create a pattern that matches anything BUT a | or }} but I would like to understand how to do this in the general case as well.

That is I would like to match any character any number of times and stop once I hit either a | or a }} So 

[\w\s`~!@#\$%\^&\*\(\)-\+=\[\]\\;"',<\.>\/\?\{\}:]*

and return when I hit }} or |

What I currently have is:

var regex = /[\w\s`~!@#\$%\^&\*\(\)-\+\=\[\]\\;"',<\.>\/\?\{\}\:]*(?!((\|)|(\}\})))/

then something like

var str = "abc}}";
str.match(regex)

should return abc but mine doesn't even work even after hours using debuggex

The problem I have is I need to also be allowed to have a single } within my match so just taking out the \} from the first group doesn't work. I don't even understand how this is possible and in other expressions I will need to be able to recognize [anything but {{, {:, {{{, |, }}] and I can't grasp the logic to code this. Also in case I missed a special character that needs to be escaped or have a redundant backslash please let me know.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 39

Answers (2)

nnnnnn
nnnnnn

Reputation: 150080

Maybe something like this:

/(.+?)(\||}}||$)/

That is:

  • (.+?) non-greedy capturing match of one or more of any character
  • (\||}}||$) capturing match of \| or }} or $ (end of string).

The result you want will be the first captured match, i.e., the second item of the array returned by .match() (if there is a match):

var regex = /(.+?)(\||\}\}|$)/;
console.log("abc}}".match(regex));
console.log("abc}def}}".match(regex));
console.log("abc}123}456}}x".match(regex));
console.log("abc|def".match(regex));
console.log("abc".match(regex));

Upvotes: 1

jack
jack

Reputation: 2914

This should do it:

var regex = /(.*[^}}|\|])/

The () indicate a capturing group, which is how you get it to return abc in your example.

Generally translated:

.* any number of any characters...

[^ except for...

}}|\|] }} or |.

(Tip - https://regex101.com/ is a pretty handy tool for generating and testing regular expressions.)

Upvotes: 0

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