JavaScript: Allow characters with Regex but exclude certain patterns of those characters

Question

Is there a way to allow a certain range of characters, but also exclude certain patterns of these allowed characters?

For example, let's say you're searching for a range of letters:

[A-Za-z]

but you don't want to match a certain pattern of these accepted characters, for example:

abc

I've been trying to craft an expression for a while and have had no luck. What I've been able to come up with was:

([A-Za-z][^abc])*

But this doesn't provide the behavior I'm looking for. Is there a way to search a range of characters and exclude certain patters of the accepted characters?

EDIT

To clarify, I was wondering if I could be able to still match the characters besides the unaccepted pattern. For example, if we had:

SomeTextabcMoreText

and abc is an illegal pattern, is there a way to match the legal characters and yield some result similar to:

SomeText
MoreText

Are you expecting to get just one occurrence or multiple occurrences of abc? — Neil Twist
– Neil Twist, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 0:42
I don't understand why there's a downvote - if my question is inappropriate I'd appreciate feedback — Nick Zuber
– Nick Zuber, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 0:51
I've had a play. I'm ready to admit that regex is not the right answer for this! — Neil Twist
– Neil Twist, Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 1:07

Neil Twist · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-10 01:20:21Z

1

I don't think that regexes are the right solution to this.

There are two option depending upon language:

String.replace - If you're looking to just output the results.
String.split if you're looking to tokenize the results.

$('#replace').text("SomeabcStringabcwithsomeabccharacters".replace(/abc/g, ""));
$('#split').text(JSON.stringify("SomeabcStringabcwithsomeabccharacters".split("abc")));

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id='replace'></div>
<div id='split'></div>

edited Mar 10, 2016 at 1:20

answered Mar 10, 2016 at 0:30

Neil Twist

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Nick Zuber · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-10 01:13:23Z

0

After taking a step back and analyzing my particular problem more, I realize that Regex wouldn't be the best way to solve this.

It would make more sense to parse the string using the illegal pattern as a delimiter:

var data = 'SomeTextabcMoreText';
var illegalPattern = 'abc';

console.log(data.split(illegalPattern)); // => ["SomeText", "MoreText"]

DEMO

answered Mar 10, 2016 at 1:13

Nick Zuber

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1 Comment

Neil Twist Over a year ago

I came to the same conclusion in the end. I think that Regexes are good for matching and returning strings, but for this sort of thing, perhaps they add more complication than it's worth. Also, remember that someone may have to maintain it one day.

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