Regex (.NET) to find a pattern between two other patterns

Question

I have a string that looks something like this:

DOG[i want to look for specific hits of stuff here]

I want to match any occurrences of the words "look" or "stuff" that occur between the opening DOG[ and the closing ]

I know I can write a rege like (?<=DOG\[).*?(?=\]) to find all text between the opening and closing bits, but I want to look for only specific words between these openers and closers.

How can I do this?

It is .NET, use (?<=DOG\[[^][]*?)(?:look|stuff)(?=[^][]*]) — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented May 7, 2020 at 20:12
You have no idea how much you've just helped me. Do you mind writing a full-on answer where you can explain your code in a little more detail? I want to understand it a little more. — Bassinator
– Bassinator, Commented May 7, 2020 at 20:17
There are alternatives and workarounds for this, too, but I can't show you any since you have not explained what you plan to do with the matches. — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented May 7, 2020 at 20:44

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-07 20:30:24Z

2

Since in .NET regex you may use patterns matching strings of unknown length in lookbehinds, you may use

(?<=DOG\[[^][]*?)(?:look|stuff)(?=[^][]*])

See the regex demo.

Here,

(?<=DOG\[[^][]*?) - a positive lookbehind that matches a location immediately preceded with DOG[ and any 0+ chars other than [ and ]
(?:look|stuff) - look or stuff
(?=[^][]*]) - a positive lookahead that matches a location immediately followed with any 0+ chars other than [ and ] and then a ].

answered May 7, 2020 at 20:30

Wiktor Stribiżew

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