Regular expression containing one word or another

Question

I need to create an expression matching a whole number followed by either "seconds" or "minutes"

I tried this expression: ([0-9]+)\s+(\bseconds\b)|(\bminutes\b)

It works fine for seconds, but not minutes.

E.g. "5 seconds" gives 5;seconds; while "5 minutes" gives ;;minutes

score 130 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 18 '13 at 10:33

130

You just missed an extra pair of brackets for the "OR" symbol. The following should do the trick:

([0-9]+)\s+((\bseconds\b)|(\bminutes\b))

Without those you were either matching a number followed by seconds OR just the word minutes

answered Jun 18 '13 at 10:33

micantox

24

but thats an "extra match" that is not required. Either use `([0-9]+)\s+(?:(\bseconds\b)|(\bminutes\b))` or `([0-9]+)\s+(\bseconds\b|\bminutes\b)` – dognose Jun 18 '13 at 10:56
4

Yea that's true, no need for the brackets around \bseconds\b and \bminutes\b! – micantox Jun 18 '13 at 11:01

score 60 · Answer 2 · answered May 17 '17 at 15:02

60

You can use a single group for seconds/minutes. The following expression may suit your needs:

([0-9]+)\s*(seconds|minutes)

Online demo

answered May 17 '17 at 15:02

Mistalis

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 16 '22 at 08:57

4

If you care about the word boundaries and want to keep matches to a minimum use this:

([0-9]+)\s*\b(seconds|minutes)\b

answered Jan 16 '22 at 08:57

Richard Garside

This will not work if there is no spaces between number and text. – Toto Jan 16 '22 at 10:25
@Toto the original question has a space between the number and the word. If you want to make that space optional, then leave out the first '\b'. – Richard Garside Jan 17 '22 at 21:20