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I have been banging my head all day trying to figure out how to formulate what seems to be a tricky regex expression. Here we go:

NAME=JOHN,SMITH

I want to select "JOHN" and "SMITH" (not the comma nor the equals sign)

In other words, I want an expression to select LETTERS after an equals sign (while not including the equals sign itself) regardless of whether or not the letters/words are separated by a comma. I'm afraid I can't change the formatting.

Thanks. I'm using JavaScript btw.

EDIT: Here is what I managed to put together so far. /=(\D[^=\n,]+)/g However, this still selects the equals sign and doesn't add any other words that may come after a comma.

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  • What have you come up with so far? Commented Jun 17, 2015 at 16:07
  • regardless of whether or not the letters/words are separated by a comma. This means this example you would want the result be 'JOHN,SMITH' ? Commented Jun 17, 2015 at 16:08
  • @fuyushimoya no the name could be just "JANE" or 'JOHN" and "SMITH" (either just a first name or a first and last name seperated by just a comma) Commented Jun 17, 2015 at 16:10
  • don't overthink it: /NAME=(\w+),?(\w+)?/ Commented Jun 17, 2015 at 16:11
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    sigh.. please post actual "before" and "after" examples for what you actually want. e.g. what do you want a result variable to actually contain. show an actual example or two Commented Jun 17, 2015 at 16:17

4 Answers 4

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I want to select "JOHN" and "SMITH"

Use this : 

'NAME=JOHN,SMITH'.match(/\=(\w+),?(\w+)/)

the result will be on the second and third index of the array :

["=JOHN,SMITH", "JOHN", "SMITH"]

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7 Comments

I absolutely agree with you except that I am also using a plugin (probably should have mentioned that above) that accepts nothing but a regex expression. (I couldn't use .match() ) if I wanted to. So frustrating!
The regex is nothing but \=(\w+),?(\w+)
@Walendas - Then please post your real requirements.
@Walendas What does your plugin except as a parameter ?
@RoyiNamir nothing but a regex expression
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You can do something like this:

/\w+(?!.*=)/g

That will do a negative lookahead meaning you want a word: \w+ that is NOT before any number of characters plus an = sign.

Then the global will give you multiple matches excluding a comma. I believe this is what you're looking for? You won't have any match groups, but I don't believe you need any from what you've said so far.

Regex101 Example

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Will this do?

var str = 'NAME=JOHN,SMITH';
str = str.replace(/NAME\=([A-Z]+?)\,([A-Z]+?)/g,'$1 $2');
alert(str);

http://jsfiddle.net/t5ed7gcr/1/

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This regex should do it for you

/(.+?(?==))|([^,?=?]+)/g

The first part, (.+?(?==)), uses a positive lookahead to search for the = character. It basically groups anything before the = character

The second part, ([^,?=?]+) groups everything that isn't a , or a =, so it groups the other two components of your search string. Tell me if this works for you :)

If you do not want the NAME part, you can use simply /(\w+(?!.*=))/g.

If you do not want it to be grouped, you can remove the parentheses which gives you /.+?(?==)|[^,?=?]+/g and /\w+(?!.*=)/g.

You can test the regex here

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