Match partial and whole words in any order

Question

I would like to be able to catch strings like:

user input into search field:

Grey box

And in a list there should be a match with:

Grey Boxing Gloves
Grey Window Box
Box with Grey Paint

This should not match:

Greater boxing gloves

Attempts:

(?=.*\b\w*\b).+

@revo it shouldnt matter in what order you search the string in. Hope that clears it up :) — Joel, May 25 '18 at 12:37
Sorry, why `greyer boxing` shouldn't be a match but `grey boxing` should be? — revo, May 25 '18 at 12:41
@revo You're correct. My bad. I'll correct. Greyer should match — Joel, May 25 '18 at 12:42
Fine. Please update your requirements and show your attempts. — revo, May 25 '18 at 12:42
How is your attempt `(?=.*\b\w*\b).+` connected to user input? — , May 25 '18 at 12:50
@Arkadiy `boolean = (Object.match(new RegExp('(?=.*\b\w*\b).+');` — Joel, May 25 '18 at 12:51
@Arkadiy no, because there is nothing called `allgrey` (if that makes sense) :D — Joel, May 25 '18 at 12:52
@Joel, please update your question. Also, what is filterStringDesc ? Just provide the regexp you generated for your example. — , May 25 '18 at 12:53
@Arkadiy it's just an empty string. ` filterStringDesc ="";` — Joel, May 25 '18 at 12:55

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 25 '18 at 13:01

0

One way could be using positive lookaheads. They don't consume characters, hence order doesn't matter. If query being searched is Grey box regex will look like:

^(?=.*Grey)(?=.*box)

I wrote a code snippet to build a regex regardless of number of words within it. But take care, query should pass a filtering / quoting process before being used in a regex:

var query = "Grey box";

var list = ['Grey Boxing Gloves',
'Grey Window Box',
'Box with Grey Paint',
'Greater boxing gloves']

// You should filter `query` before building regex
var re = '^(?=.*' + query.split(/\s+/).join(')(?=.*') + ')';

list.forEach(function(x){
   if (x.match(new RegExp(re, 'i'))) {
      console.log(x);
   }
})

answered May 25 '18 at 13:01

revo

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So in other words: `^(?=.*\w*)(?=.*\w*)` ? – Joel May 25 '18 at 13:10
`\w*` should replace words in your query. – revo May 25 '18 at 13:12
have a look here. It doesn't seem to match anything. https://regexr.com/3q1no – Joel May 25 '18 at 13:13
Did you run code snippet in the answer? Also see here https://regex101.com/r/mkAESb/1 I'm not sure about regexr behavior. – revo May 25 '18 at 13:14
Yes. Anyhow, i verified that `(?=.*\w*)(?=.*\w*)` gives me the correct results now on my end. – Joel May 25 '18 at 13:17

Match partial and whole words in any order

1 Answers1