CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
Chris
Chris

Reputation: 6233

How to allow slashes in this PHP regex?

I have been trying for hours now and also read the Regex wiki here on Stackoverflow but can't seem to accomplish this regex. This is the string I have:

Lorem: 8 FB / Ipsum-/Dolor: Some Text / Dolor: Some text with (brackets) / Sit amet.: Some Text with/slash / foobar / Last one: 36 foos

What I would like to extract is: Lorem, Ipsum-/Dolor, Dolor, Sit amet., Last one. So basically everything from the beginning of the sentence or after a slash until the colon.

Whatever I try the problem is always the foobar since it always sticks together with Last one. What I tried for example so far is: ( \/ |\A)([^(?!.* \/ )].*?): which I hoped would extract everything starting from a slash going until a colon but not if there is / (empty space, slash, empty space). That way I wanted to make sure not to get foobar / Last one returned.

Could someone provide me with some hint

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1484

Answers (1)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626690

Note that you make a common mistake placing a sequence of patterns into a character class ([...]) thus making the regex engine match a single character from the defined set. [^(?!.* \/ )] matches a single character other than (, ?, !, ., etc.

You may use a tempered greedy token:

(?: \/ |\A)((?:(?! \/ )[^:])+):
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

See the regex demo. The literal spaces may be replaced with \s (if you can match any whitespaces) or \h (to only match horizontal whitespaces).

Details:

  • (?: \/ |\A) - either space + / + space or start of string
  • ((?:(?! \/ )[^:])+) - Group 1 capturing one or more symbols other than : ([^:]) that is not a starting point for a space + / + space sequence
  • : - a literal colon.

Upvotes: 6

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