CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvba
xLokos
xLokos

Reputation: 109

Positive lookbehind/lookahead RegEx VBA

I know that VBA does not support positive lookahead/lookbehind, so I need some advice with the problem below.

I want to replace all spaces only between single characters so that A B C becomes ABC but AB C stays AB C.

ObjRegex.Pattern = "((?<=\b\w)\s(?=\w\b))"
SampleString = ObjRegex.Replace(SampleString, vbNullString)

Any help would be appreciated.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 928

Answers (1)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626738

You may use

ObjRegex.Pattern = "\b(\w)\s(?=\w)\b"
SampleString = ObjRegex.Replace(SampleString, "$1" & vbNullString)

The lookbehind can be turned into a capturing group and its consumed value can be restored (put back) into the result with the $1 placeholder.

See the regex demo.

Pattern details

  • \b - a word boundary
  • (\w) - Group 1 (referred to with $1 placeholder from the replacement pattern): a word char
  • \s - a whitespace
  • (?=\w) - a positive lookahead that requires a word char immediately to the right of the current position
  • \b - a word boundary

Upvotes: 2

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