regex to get substring before substring

Question

I have a string like following,

hi,hello,-LSB-,ASPECT,-RSB-,you

I want to extract sub-string that comes before -LSB-,ASPECT, till comma, hello in this case.

I have written regular expression like

\b\w+[/-/,LSB/-/,ASPECT]

however it extracts entire substring before and inclusing-LSB-,ASPECT, till start like,

hi,hello,-LSB-,ASPECT

Any clue??

Why are you trying to use a regex for this? It's a simple case of using SubString() and IndexOf(); there's no need at all for a regex. — Ken White
– Ken White, Commented Jun 7, 2014 at 15:19
there may be many "," or words before -LSB-,ASPECT , also -LSB-,ASPECT can be any where in this big string, this is just example. — user3667737
– user3667737, Commented Jun 7, 2014 at 15:26

Tim Pietzcker · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-07 15:20:30Z

3

The regex for this (using a positive lookahead assertion) would be

[^,]*(?=,-LSB-,ASPECT,)

Explanation:

[^,]*            # Match any number of characters except commas
(?=              # until the following regex can be matched:
 ,-LSB-,ASPECT,  # the literal text ",-LSB-,ASPECT,".
)                # (End of lookahead assertion)

Careful, square brackets create a character class which you don't want in this case.

answered Jun 7, 2014 at 15:20

Tim Pietzcker

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2 Comments

Dalorzo Over a year ago

@TimPietzceker my mistake apologies you're right +1

user3667737 Over a year ago

looks good in expresso, but also returning a NULL character too there. Will put in my actual code ....

CMPS · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-07 15:22:00Z

0

Live demo

Try this:

(\w+),-LSB-,ASPECT

answered Jun 7, 2014 at 15:22

CMPS

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