Regex get string between ()

Question

I have the text

   var text =  (hello) world this is (hi) text

I want to write a regex function so I can get

parseText(text) // returns ['hello', 'hi']

I tried this but not work:

'(hello) world this is (hi) text'.match('((.*?))')

Thanks for your help

I tried this but not work: '(hello) world this is (hi) text'.match('((.*?))') — coinhndp
– coinhndp, Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 13:20
@coinhndp Please edit your question and put that information in it — Jan Stránský
– Jan Stránský, Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 13:22
match only returns the first match if you don't use the g flag for the regular expression: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/… . Also you are passing a string literal, not a regular expression which makes things trickier. You can learn about regular expressions here: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/… — Felix Kling
– Felix Kling, Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 13:23
Possible duplicate of Regular Expression to find a string included between two characters while EXCLUDING the delimiters — Jan Stránský
– Jan Stránský, Commented Sep 21, 2020 at 14:38

Olaf Erlandsen · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-21 15:20:49Z

2

you can try with: /\([^\)]+\)/g

\(: escaped char
[^\)]+: one or more character^{(including symbols)} until ) char.
\): escaped char
g flag: search all coincidences

const regex = /\([^\)]+\)/g;
const str = `(hello) world this is (hi) text`;

console.log(
  str.match(regex) // this returns an string array
    .map(i => i.slice(1, -1)) // remove first and last char
);

TIPS:

About point #2, you can change to [\)]* to take effect over zero or more character.

If you need only string, you can use \w+ or \w*.

If you need only words you can use /\(\b\w+\b\)/g

edited Sep 21, 2020 at 15:20

answered Sep 21, 2020 at 13:28

Olaf Erlandsen

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2 Comments

Jan Stránský Over a year ago

I suggest replacing i.substr(1, i.length-2) with i.slice(1,-1)

Olaf Erlandsen Over a year ago

@JanStránský yeah!

Jan Stránský · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-21 13:33:35Z

You can find several options in this post.

Apart from using groups or postprocessing of the match results, you can use single regex match using lookahead / lookbehind:

var text = " (hello) world this is (hi) text"
var output = text.match(/(?<=\().*?(?=\))/g)
console.log(output)

output:

[ 'hello', 'hi' ]

Explanation:

(?<=...) ... positive lookbehind. The match is preceded be ..., but the ... is not included in the match
(?<=\() ... positive lookbehind for ( character
.* ... zero or more times of any character
.*? ... nongreedy version of .*
(?=...) ... positive lookahead, the match is followed by ... but the ... is not included in the match
(?=\)) ... positive lookahead for ) character
/.../g ... g is global flag, match finds all, not only the first, occurrence
do not forget to escape "special characters", e.g. parentheses

Jan Stránský · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-21 23:29:29Z

1

'(hello) world this is (hi) text'.match(/\([\w]*\)/g)

This returns [ "(hello)", "(hi)" ] and you can run another parse function to remove that extra parenthesis.

const text = '(hello) world this is (hi) text';
const list = text.match(/\([\w]*\)/g);
const parsed = list.map(item => item.replace(/\(|\)/g, ''));
console.log(parsed);

edited Sep 21, 2020 at 23:29

Jan Stránský

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answered Sep 21, 2020 at 13:30

n1md7

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1 Comment

Jan Stránský Over a year ago

list.map(item => item.slice(1,-1)); is maybe more readable?

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