Regular expression matching (Javascript)

Question

I've got the following string: |Africa||Africans||African Society||Go Africa Go||Mafricano||Go Mafricano Go||West Africa|.

Right now I've come up with: /\|[^\|]*africa[^\|]*\|/gi, which says:

\| Match |

[^\|]* Match zero to unlimited instances of any character except |

africa Match africa literally

[^\|]* Match zero to unlimited instances of any character except |

\| Match |

Can anybody help me?

why don't you use replace ? It should be much more easier. — Kai
– Kai, Commented Oct 18, 2014 at 8:33
@JhKaiz, @AvinashRaj: I need an array of all matched terms, so I'll be using the match() function — AKG
– AKG, Commented Oct 18, 2014 at 8:36

Amit Joki · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-18 08:51:36Z

4

You can use this regex

[^|]*\bAfrica[a-z]*\b[^|]*

DEMO

var str = "|Africa||Africans||African Society||Go Africa Go||Mafricano||Go Mafricano Go||West Africa|";
var arr = str.match(/[^|]*\bAfrica[a-z]*\b[^|]*/g);
console.log(arr); // ["Africa", "Africans", "African Society", "Go Africa Go", "West Africa"]

edited Oct 18, 2014 at 8:51

answered Oct 18, 2014 at 8:35

Amit Joki

59.4k7 gold badges80 silver badges96 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

Avinash Raj · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-18 08:42:22Z

1

I think you want something like this,

\|(?:(?!Mafrica|\|).)*?africa(?:(?!Mafrica|\|).)*?\|

DEMO

> "|Africa||Africans||African Society||Go Africa Go||Mafricano||Go Mafricano Go||West Africa|".match(/\|(?:(?!Mafrica|\|).)*?africa(?:(?!Mafrica|\|).)*?\|/gi);
[ '|Africa|',
  '|Africans|',
  '|African Society|',
  '|Go Africa Go|',
  '|West Africa|' ]

Don't forget to turn on the i modifier to do a case insensitive match.

Explanation:

\|                       '|'
(?:                      group, but do not capture (0 or more
                         times):
  (?!                      look ahead to see if there is not:
    Mafrica                  'Mafrica'
   |                        OR
    \|                       '|'
  )                        end of look-ahead
  .                        any character except \n
)*?                      end of grouping
africa                   'africa'
(?:                      group, but do not capture (0 or more
                         times):
  (?!                      look ahead to see if there is not:
    Mafrica                  'Mafrica'
   |                        OR
    \|                       '|'
  )                        end of look-ahead
  .                        any character except \n
)*?                      end of grouping
\|                       '|'

edited Oct 18, 2014 at 8:42

answered Oct 18, 2014 at 8:35

Avinash Raj

175k32 gold badges247 silver badges289 bronze badges

3 Comments

AKG Over a year ago

The entries are way more diverse and more random than Mafricano, so this would not scale for other entries. Thanks though.

AKG Over a year ago

My apologies for that. I thought that was implied.

Avinash Raj Over a year ago

You're welcome.. Next time don't forget to to post a question with detailed explanation on very first.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Regular expression matching (Javascript)

2 Answers 2

Comments

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related