RegExp match word till space or character

Question

I'm trying to match all the words starting with # and words between 2 # (see example)

var str = "#The test# rain in #SPAIN stays mainly in the #plain"; 
var res = str.match(/(#)[^\s]+/gi);

The result will be ["#The", "#SPAIN", "#plain"] but it should be ["#The test#", "#SPAIN", "#plain"]

Extra: would be nice if the result would be without the #.

Does anyone has a solution for this?

Well, try [`#\w+(?:(?: +\w+)*#)?`](https://regex101.com/r/mY5zL9/1). I doubt it is that easy to get rid of the trailing `#` with a regex. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Feb 12 '16 at 12:41
@E.Fortes Answer by Wiktor not me, he has added answer with explanation, upvote and accept if that has solved the problem. — Tushar, Feb 12 '16 at 12:55

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-12T13:15:51.163

4

You can use

/#\w+(?:(?: +\w+)*#)?/g

See the demo here

The regex matches:

# - a hash symbol
\w+ - one or more alphanumeric and underscore characters
(?:(?: +\w+)*#)? - one or zero occurrence of:
- (?: +\w+)* - zero or more occurrences of one or more spaces followed with one or more word characters followed with
- # - a hash symbol

NOTE: If there can be characters other than word characters (those in the [A-Za-z0-9_] range), you can replace \w with [^ #]:

/#[^ #]+(?:(?: +[^ #]+)*#)?/g

See another demo

var re = /#[^ #]+(?:(?: +[^ #]+)*#)?/g;
var str = '#The test-mode# rain in #SPAIN stays mainly in the #plain #SPAIN has #the test# and more #here';
var m = str.match(re);
if (m) {

  // Using ES6 Arrow functions
  m = m.map(s => s.replace(/#$/g, ''));

  // ES5 Equivalent
  /*m = m.map(function(s) {
    return s.replace(/#$/g, '');
  });*/ // getting rid of the trailing #
  document.body.innerHTML = "<pre>" + JSON.stringify(m, 0, 4) + "</pre>";
}

edited Feb 12 '16 at 13:15

answered Feb 12 '16 at 12:51

Wiktor Stribiżew

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I updated the snippet to also remove the trailing `#`. – Wiktor Stribiżew Feb 12 '16 at 13:02
I added another regex in case there are other than word characters between the hash symbols. The main point is that there should be a space inside. Snippet is also updated. – Wiktor Stribiżew Feb 12 '16 at 13:19
1

Thank you for your great help and the good explanation. Did the job. – E. Fortes Feb 12 '16 at 17:53

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

1

You can also try this regex.

#(?:\b[\s\S]*?\b#|\w+)

(?: opens a non capture group for alternation
\b matches a word boundary
\w matches a word character
[\s\S] matches any character

See demo at regex101 (use with g global flag)

edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Community

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answered Feb 12 '16 at 13:08

bobble bubble

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Thank you bobble. I already used this one: /#[^ #]+(?:(?: +[^ #]+)*#)?/g – E. Fortes Feb 12 '16 at 18:00

RegExp match word till space or character

2 Answers2