CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Dasaru
Dasaru

Reputation: 2898

How can I match all instances of the first letter?

For example, for this string I want to match all A and a:

"All the apples make good cake."

Here's what I did: /(.)[^.]*\1*/ig

I started by getting the first character in the group, which can be any character: (.) Then I added [^.]* because I don't want to match any other character that isn't the first one. Finally I added \1* because I wanted to match the first character again. All other similar variations that I've tried don't seem to work.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 38

Answers (1)

revo
revo

Reputation: 48711

The regex you are trying to build would capture very first character then any thing up to the same character as much as possible, using a negative lookahead (tempered dot):

(?i)(\w)(?:(?!\1).)*

Capturing group 1 holds the character you need. Try it on a live demo.

If regex engine supports \K match re-setter token then you can append it to the regex above to only match desired part:

(?i)(\w)(?:(?!\1).)*\K

Upvotes: 2

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