Regex for extracting string between patterns

Question

Need some help with the regex to be used for extracting string between a start_pattern and an end_pattern. Additionally, the regex should grep all characters upto the end of line if no end_pattern exists.

Sample 1 : "BOOK1:book1A,book1B,book1C,book1D"

Expected Result : book1A,book1B,book1C,book1D

Sample 2 : "BOOK1:book1A,book1B,book1C,book1D|BOOK2:book2A,book2B,book2C,book2DA"

Expected Result : (1)book1A,book1B,book1C,book1D (2)book2A,book2B,book2C,book2DA

I've managed to resolve the regex (shown below) when the string terminator is "|", but cannot get around to resolving it when there is no terminator

(?<=BOOK1:).*(?=\|)

You may want to add a question mark at the end: (?<=BOOK1:).*?(?=\|)?, also you should use the non-greedy .*? instead of the greedy .* unless you want "Sample 2" to match book1A,book1B,book1C,book1D|BOOK2:book2A,book2B,book2C,book2DA — Nolonar
– Nolonar, Commented Jul 4, 2013 at 14:29

Anirudha · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-04 14:38:53Z

2

Use $ and change .* to .*?

(?<=BOOK1:|\|).*?(?=\||$)

$ marks the end of line or string

.*? would match lazily

For example, for input

a|b|c|d|e

with regex

(?<=\|).*(?=\|)

it would match b|c|d

with regex

(?<=\|).*?(?=\|)

it would match

b
c
d

edited Jul 4, 2013 at 14:38

answered Jul 4, 2013 at 14:28

Anirudha

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