CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
roncook
roncook

Reputation: 397

Regex find word occuring x times?

Say I have the string:

"foo bar foo x foo y bar foo"

I want to find words occurring three or more times, so "foo".

To find a word occuring more than once I have the regex

\b(\w+)\b(?=.*\1)

I tried (\b(\w+)\b(?=.*\1)){3,}, but this returns no matches. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 410

Answers (1)

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785246

You can use this regex:

^.*(\b\w+\b)(?<!^.*\1.*\1)(?:(?:(?!\1).)*\1){3}(?:(?!\1).)*$

RegEx Demo

Explanation:

  • ^.*: Match from the start.
  • (\b\w+\b): Match and capture a word in group #1
  • (?<!^.*\1.*\1): Lookbehind to assert no group #1 between the start and group #1
  • (?:(?:(?!\1).)*\1){3}: Match something plus group #1 three times
    • (?:(?!\1).)*: Match anything except group#1
  • (?:(?!\1).)*$: Match anything except group#1 to the end

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions