Regex match group

Question

How to match multiple times a group using a simple regex. I try with this: (?:key:)((?:\s*'[^']+')), but does not work.

Input

key: 'val1' 'val2' 'val3'

Output

group 1 = val1

group 2 = val2

group 3 = val3

EDIT: How to find all tags enclosed by simples quotes after a desired key?

maybe duplicated with: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37003623/how-to-capture-multiple-repeated-groups — Zhu Ran, Mar 28 '17 at 02:03
Post an example of what the result should be. Also explain the search pattern as best as you can. Like when you say, "group"... a group of what? — zer00ne, Mar 28 '17 at 02:27

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

You can't directly do what you want. With regex you can't have a variable number of capturing groups.

However. If your amount of groups is limited, then you could repeat (?:\s*('[^']+')*)? for that limit. Thus to be able to match your given example, you'd need.

key:(?:\s*('[^']+')*)?(?:\s*('[^']+')*)?(?:\s*('[^']+')*)?

Note that (?:\s*('[^']+')*)? has been repeated 3 times.

Live preview

It might be easier and better to just iterate over this pattern '[^']+'. As you didn't mention any language, I took the liberty of doing it in Python.

import re
string = "'val1' 'val2' 'val3'"
for i, match in enumerate(re.finditer(r"'([^']+)'", string), start=1):
    print("group %d = %s" % (i, match.group(1)))

The above when executed will print:

group 1 = val1

group 2 = val2

group 3 = val3

So instead of trying to make a "variable" number of capturing groups. Instead try an iterate all the matches for the quotes pattern.

Luis Daniel · Answer 2 · 2017-03-28T03:50:45.227

0

I solved this problem using the following regular expression: (?:key:\G)|('[^']+')+, here is the link to check how it works.

edited Mar 28 '17 at 03:50

answered Mar 28 '17 at 03:43

Luis Daniel

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Regex match group

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