CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Taylor Reed
Taylor Reed

Reputation: 355

Regex optional group match after specific words

Regex:

(\d+).*?((?:[a-z][a-z\s?]+)).*?((?:court|ct|street|st)).*?(UNT\s?[\d\w].*|#\s?[\d\w].*)/ig

Matching

119 testing str test court #123

119 testing stret test court # 123

119 testing strt ct UNT 123

119 testing st UNT dsff

123 testing blah ct

My current regex is capturing correctly on the first 4 entries. How can I make everything involving # and UNT optional so my final "123 testing blah ct" can have capturing groups too?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 318

Answers (1)

user557597
user557597

Reputation:

You can't just make the ending optional, it won't match if it don't have to.
Have to induce it to continue.

That can be done with the EOL anchor $.

Note that this part [a-z\s?] is a class that matches a-z or whitespace or question mark literal.
Not sure if that's what you meant.

demo

(?im)(\d+).*?((?:[a-z](?:[a-z]|[^\S\r\n])+)).*?((?:court|ct|street|st)).*?((?:UNT|\#)[^\S\r\n]?\w.*)?$

Explained: 

 (?im)                                  # Modifiers: ignore case, multi-line

 ( \d+ )                                # (1)
 .*? 
 (                                      # (2 start)
      (?:
           [a-z] 
           (?: [a-z] | [^\S\r\n] )+
      )
 )                                      # (2 end)
 .*? 
 (                                      # (3 start)
      (?: court | ct | street | st )
 )                                      # (3 end)
 .*? 
 (                                      # (4 start)
      (?: UNT | \# )
      [^\S\r\n]? \w .* 
 )?                                     # (4 end)

 $                                      # End of line (or string)

Upvotes: 1

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