capture string between characters with jquery

Question

I have a variable which contains "j_id0:j_id11:i:f:pb:d:MyFieldName.input" (without the quotes).

Now I would like to capture "MyFieldName".

I had this:

var test = "j_id0:j_id11:i:f:pb:d:MyFieldName.input";
var testRE = test.match(":(.*).input");
console.log("old text: " + test);
console.log("new text: " + testRE[1]);

which outputs this:

old text: j_id0:j_id11:i:f:pb:d:MyFieldName.input
new text: j_id11:i:f:pb:d:MyFieldName

So what I need is telling him that I want everything between the last occurence ":" and ".input", because now he finds the first ':' and stops there.

Any ideas how I can realise this?

Thanks!

David Thomas · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-09 13:26:49Z

2

One option that remains (among, presumably, many others) is:

var str = "j_id0:j_id11:i:f:pb:d:MyFieldName.input",
    fieldName = str.substring(str.lastIndexOf(':') + 1, str.lastIndexOf('.'));

JS Fiddle demo.

References:

answered Aug 9, 2013 at 13:26

David Thomas

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Comments

krial · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-09 13:19:48Z

1

This regex will work:

.*:(.*)\.input

edited Aug 9, 2013 at 13:19

answered Aug 9, 2013 at 13:08

krial

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1 Comment

krial Over a year ago

@dystroy no. By default, a quantified subpattern is "greedy", that is, it will match as many times as possible and therefore match the last occurence of ":". Proof: jsfiddle.net/m4e6d/2

colestrode · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-09 13:50:56Z

1

You could try this without regular expressions:

var test = "j_id0:j_id11:i:f:pb:d:MyFieldName.input";
var fieldName = test.split(':').pop().split('.')[0];

edited Aug 9, 2013 at 13:50

answered Aug 9, 2013 at 13:08

colestrode

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3 Comments

David Thomas Over a year ago

This isn't a criticism of your approach, but is there a reason to not use testParts.pop().split('.')[0]?

colestrode Over a year ago

@DavidThomas Very nice... I always forget about the pop method!

colestrode Over a year ago

I'm not sure. I find regexes difficult to read and debug, so I stay away from them when I can

Smern · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-09 13:22:40Z

0

The problem with your regex is that it matches the first :, and then captures everything (.*) up until .input. To avoid this, you can make sure that your capture between : and .input cannot include more :.

This regex should work for you:

/:(\w+)\.input/

Fiddle

var test = "j_id0:j_id11:i:f:pb:d:MyFieldName.input";
var testRE = test.match(/:(\w+)\.input/)
console.log("old text: " + test);
console.log("new text: " + testRE[1]); //MyFieldName

Group 1 will contain your field name.

I think the above should work for you, but if you need more than \w characters, you could use this instead to allow for things like "...:My.Field.Name.input" and capture "My.Field.Name":

/:([^:]+)\.input/

edited Aug 9, 2013 at 13:22

answered Aug 9, 2013 at 13:07

Smern

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