Regex lookaround to find anything up to an already searched group - regex

Question

I'm trying to analyze search queries of a particular pattern.
The pattern is:
How many/much _____ is/are _____.
Given this pattern, the blanks are unknown to me but I want to extract any statement that follows this pattern above.
My challenge is finding a way to do a lookaround on is/are up to but not including many/much and anything after but not including is/are.
Here's my regex so far:
(([hH]ow many?)|([hH]ow much?))|(?<=is)|(are)|(i|s|n|a|o|f){1,2}|((\")|(\“)|(\/)|(\'))

Answer 1

If you use this regex with the i flag to match case insensitive
^how\s+(?:much|many)\s+(.*?)\s(?:is|are)\s+(.*?)[.?]?$
Then it'll match these strings
How much bla is blabla.
How many bla are blablabla?
And the bla's will be in capture group 1 and 2.

Answer 2

Try this:
/(?<=[Hh]ow\smany\s|[Hh]ow\smuch\s)(.+)(?=\sis|\sare)|(?<=is\s|are\s)(.+)/g
Review it at regex101
Lookarounds are placed behind and/or ahead of your capture group:
1st Capture Group
(?<=[Hh]ow\smany\s|[Hh]ow\smuch\s) /* "(H|h)ow"\space"many"\space OR
"(H|h)ow"\space"much"\space
must be before capture group */
(.+) /* capture group one or more of anything */
(?=\sis|\sare) /* \space"is" OR \space"are" must be after capture group */
| // OR
2nd Capture Group
(?<=is\s|are\s) /* "is"\space OR "are\space must be before capture group */
(.+) /* capture group one or more of anything */

Answer 3

If both parts for the _____ are mandatory you could use 2 capture groups:
\b[Hh]ow\s+(?:much|many)\s+(\S.*?)\s+(?:is|are)\s+([^.]+)\.
The pattern matches:
\b A word boundary to prevent a partial word match
[Hh]ow\s+ Match How or how and 1+ whitespace chars
(?:much|many)\s+ Match either much or many and 1+ whitespace chars
(\S.*?)\s+ Capture in group 1 at least a single non whitespace char, then as least as possible chars and match 1+ whitespace chars
(?:is|are)\s+ Match either is or are and 1+ whitespace chars
([^.]+) Capture in group 2 1+ chars other than a dot
\. Match a dot
See a regex demo.