Isolating URL paths with capturing groups - regex

Question

Is it possible to have n capture groups?
For example,
http://www.example.com/first-path
http://www.example.com/first-path/second-path
http://www.example.com/first-path/second-path/third-path
http://www.example.com/something.html
http://www.example.com/first-path?id=5
I am trying to capture first-path as group 1, second-path as group 2, and third-path as group 3 using http:\/\/(.*)\/(?!.*\/$)(.*), but it does not split the segments.
No specific programming language being used.

Answer 1

If you were using PHP, you could do something like this. The first split removes the leading http://www.example.com/ part, and the second then splits those values around the /:
$urls = array('http://www.example.com/first-path',
'http://www.example.com/first-path/second-path',
'http://www.example.com/first-path/second-path/third-path',
'http://www.example.com/something.html',
'http://www.example.com/first-path?id=5');
foreach ($urls as $url) {
$tail = preg_split('#https?://[^/]+/#', $url, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY)[0];
$paths = preg_split('#/#', $tail);
print_r($paths);
}
Output:
Array
(
[0] => first-path
)
Array
(
[0] => first-path
[1] => second-path
)
Array
(
[0] => first-path
[1] => second-path
[2] => third-path
)
Array
(
[0] => something.html
)
Array
(
[0] => first-path?id=5
)
A similar thing could be done in Javascript:
let urls = ['http://www.example.com/first-path',
'http://www.example.com/first-path/second-path',
'http://www.example.com/first-path/second-path/third-path',
'http://www.example.com/something.html',
'http://www.example.com/first-path?id=5'];
console.log(urls.map(s => s.split(/https?:\/\/[^\/]+\//)[1].split(/\//)))
Output:
Array(5) […] ​
0: Array [ "first-path" ]
1: Array [ "first-path", "second-path" ]
2: Array(3) [ "first-path", "second-path", "third-path" ]
3: Array [ "something.html" ]
4: Array [ "first-path?id=5" ]