I would like to conduct regex substitution. Here is the pattern I am using:
.*?fee.*?$|.*?charge.*?$
The matches the desired lines
However, it is also matching on coffee and feeder (I want to be specific that it does not match "coffee" or "feed" lines, how can I specifically prevent these matches but still handle cases like fee, fees)
You could use an alternation with 2 word boundaries \b to prevent the words being part of a larger word.
For you example data, if you want to match the single or single or plural version you can make the s at the end optional by using a question mark.
^.*\b(?:fees?|charges?)\b.*$
^ Start of the string.*\b Match any char except a newline followed by a word boundary(?:fees?|charges?) Match any of the listed followed by an optional s\b.* Word boundary, match any char except a newline 0+ times$ Assert end of the string
If you are just trying to match those two lines, you can simply use an expression similar to this:
^(fees|charges).+$
If you wish to match certain words, you might add boundaries to group one similar to this expression:
^\b(fees|fee|charge|charges)\b(.+)$
If your pattern might be in the middle of string inputs, you can add another group in the left, similar to this expression:
(?:.+|)\b(fees|fee|charge|charges)\b(?:.+|)$
This graph shows how an expression like that would work:
Regular expression design can be achieved much easier, if/when there is real data.
