Regex for strings

Question

I have a bunch of strings and need to return substrings from them

The output should replace occurrences of

Test: intervening text - Exists

with

intervening text

I've tried:

const inputs = [
  'Test: Text - N GTTTsds - Exists',
  'Test: Text something here - Exists',
  'Tictactoe foo baz - bar - Exists',
  'Something still here',
  'Joe Doe'
];
const output = [];

inputs.forEach(input => {
  const resp = /(?:Test: )?(.+)(- Exists)?/.exec(input);
  output.push(resp);
});
console.log(output);

but it doesn't produce the expected output of:

[
    "Text - N GTTTsds", 
    "Text something here", 
    "Tictactoe foo baz - bar"
    'Something still here',
    'Joe Doe'
]

The second input string only contains Exist (without the s at the end). Was that intentional? — CAustin
– CAustin, Commented Jan 7, 2020 at 19:08

Taplar · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-07 19:06:31Z

1

Why not just replace them?

const inputs = [
 'Test: Text - N GTTTsds - Exists',
 'Test: Text something here - Exist',
 'Tictactoe foo baz - bar - Exists',
 'Something still here',
 'Joe Doe'
];
const output = inputs.map(input => input.replace(/(^Test:)|(- Exist(s?)$)/g, '').trim());

console.log(output);

answered Jan 7, 2020 at 19:06

Taplar

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Comments

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-07 19:11:56Z

0

You may use this regex with anchors and lazy quantifier:

/^(?:Test: )?(.+?)(?: - Exists?)?$/;

Also you need to grab first capture group from resulting array.

const inputs = [
 'Test: Text - N GTTTsds - Exists',
 'Test: Text something here - Exist',
 'Tictactoe foo baz - bar - Exists',
 'Something still here',
 'Joe Doe'
];
const output = [];
const re = /^(?:Test: )?(.+?)(?: - Exists?)?$/;
var resp;

inputs.forEach(input => {
 resp = re.exec(input);
 if (resp != null && resp.length > 1)
  output.push(resp[1]);
});

console.log(output);

answered Jan 7, 2020 at 19:11

anubhava

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Comments

Zohaib Ijaz · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-07 19:07:31Z

0

You can remove Test in one iteration and - Exists in another.

const input = [
 'Test: Text - N GTTTsds - Exists',
 'Test: Text something here - Exist',
 'Tictactoe foo baz - bar - Exists',
 'Something still here',
 'Joe Doe'
];

const output = input.map(s => s.replace(/Test:\s+/g, '').replace(/\ -\ Exists?/g,  ''));

console.log(output);

answered Jan 7, 2020 at 19:07

Zohaib Ijaz

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Comments

Lukas Bach · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-07 19:14:38Z

0

Other solution: Force the Regex to match the start and the end of each string (^ and $) and make the quantifier for arbitrary characters in the middle lazy by appending an ?.

const inputs = [
  'Test: Text - N GTTTsds - Exists',
  'Test: Text something here - Exist',
  'Tictactoe foo baz - bar - Exists',
  'Something still here',
  'Joe Doe'
];
const output = [];

inputs.forEach(input => {
  const resp = /^(?:Test: )?(.+?)(- Exists)?$/.exec(input);
  output.push(resp);
});
console.log(output);

answered Jan 7, 2020 at 19:14

Lukas Bach

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