scala regex match up to a specific string but whole string if the specific word doesn't exist

Question

I have a question about scala regex

The thing I need to do is given a string, I need to find a sub-string up to a specific word given. For example, my regular expression looks like following

val x= "(?s)^(.*)(?=(foo|bar)".r

Then given a string, I need to find the longest sub-string until before foo or bar. This works perfectly but I would like to get the whole string if the string does not contain foo or bar at all.

Right now if I do

x.findAllIn("hello nice to meet you").toArray

it gives me an empty string but I would like to get "hello nice to meet you" when I do that.

Does anyone have an idea how to implement that?

mrzasa · Answer 1 · 2018-02-25T22:18:20.223

0

You can add an end-of-string assertion to the alternative:

(?s)^(.*?)(?=(foo|bar|$))

Demo

edited Feb 25 '18 at 22:18

answered Feb 25 '18 at 00:36

mrzasa

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This just always returns the whole string. You have to make the quantifier reluctant as well: `(?s)^(.*?)(?=(foo|bar|$))` – Kolmar Feb 25 '18 at 02:03
sure, you're right, correcting – mrzasa Feb 25 '18 at 22:18

scala regex match up to a specific string but whole string if the specific word doesn't exist

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