Regex to extract only text after string and before space

Question

I want to match text after given string. In this case, the text for lines starting with "BookTitle" but before first space:

BookTitle:HarryPotter JK Rowling
BookTitle:HungerGames Suzanne Collins
Author:StephenieMeyer BookTitle:Twilight

Desired output is:

HarryPotter
HungerGames

I tried: "^BookTitle(.*)" but it's giving me matches where BookTitle: is in middle of line, and also all the stuff after white space. Anyone help?

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-26 14:50:44Z

49

you can have positive lookbehind in your pattern.

 (?<=BookTitle:).*?(?=\s)

For more info: Lookahead and Lookbehind Zero-Width Assertions

edited Jul 26, 2017 at 14:50

CommunityBot

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answered Sep 10, 2013 at 1:29

John Woo

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1 Comment

John Woo Over a year ago

@user1899415 it will work on python. Click here

Edward · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-10 01:51:26Z

What language is this?
And provide some code, please; with the ^ anchor you should definitely only be matching on string that begin with BookTitle, so something else is wrong.
If you can guarantee that all whitespace is stripped from the titles, as in your examples, then ^BookTitle:(\S+) should work in many languages.
Explanation:
^ requires the match to start at the beginning of the string, as you know.
\s - *lower*case means: match on white*s*pace (space, tab, etc.)
\S - *upper*case means the inverse: match on anything BUT whitespace.
\w is another possibility: match on *w*ord character (alphanumeric plus underscore) - but that will fail you if, for example, there's an apostrophe in the title.
+, as you know, is a quantifier meaning "at least one of".
Hope that helps.

user557597 · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-10 03:51:31Z

5

With the 'multi-line' regex option use something like this:

 ^BookTitle:([^\s]+)

Without multi-line option, this:

 (?:^|\n)BookTitle:([^\s]+)

answered Sep 10, 2013 at 3:51

user557597

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