CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptregex
yankolo
yankolo

Reputation: 531

Regex: Match every character between two strings

I am trying to find a way to match every character between two strings.

For example, for the given string abc--def--ghi, I want the regex to match d, e, and f.

I've tried using the following regex (?<=--)(.*)(?=--), however this matches all the characters between -- (def), whereas I need to match every character between --.

s.match(/--(.*?)--/)[1].split("") doesn't work as I need to do this without splitting.

Any suggestions?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 825

Answers (1)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 627400

In JavaScript, using the ECMAScript 2018+ compliant regex engine, you can achieve what you want without additional split step using

/(?<=--(?:(?!--).)*).(?=(?:(?!--).)*--)/gs
/(?<=--[^-]*(?:-(?!-)[^-]*)*).(?=[^-]*(?:-(?!-)[^-]*)*--)/gs

See the regex demo (the second variant is the same regex as the first one, but more efficient as it follows the "unroll-the-loop" principle). Details:

  • (?<=--(?:(?!--).)*) - a location immediately preceded by -- and then any one or more (as many as possible) chars, each of which does not start a -- char sequence
  • . - any single char
  • (?=(?:(?!--).)*--) - immediately followed by any one or more (as many as possible) chars, each of which does not start a -- char sequence, and then --.

The s flag enables . to match any char including line break chars that . does not match by default.

Upvotes: 2

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