How can I extract Twitter #handles from a text with RegEx? - regex

Question

I'm looking for an easy way to create lists of Twitter #handles based on SocialBakers data (copy/paste into TextMate).
I've tried using the following RegEx, which I found here on StackOverflow, but unfortunately it doesn't work the way I want it to:
^(?!.*#([\w+])).*$
While the expression above deletes all lines without #handles, I'd like the RegEx to delete everything before and after the #handle as well as lines without #handles.
Example:
1
katyperry KATY PERRY (#katyperry)
Followings 158
Followers 82 085 596
Rating
5
Worst012345678910Best
2
justinbieber Justin Bieber (#justinbieber)
254 399
74 748 878
2
Worst012345678910Best
3
taylorswift13 Taylor Swift (#taylorswift13)
245
70 529 992
Desired result:
#katyperry
#justinbieber
#taylorswift13
Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

Something like this:
cat file | perl -ne 'while(s/(#[a-z0-9_]+)//gi) { print $1,"\n"}'
This will also work if you have lines with multiple #handles in.

Answer 2

A Twitter handle regex is #\w+. So, to remove everything else, you need to match and capture the pattern and use a backreference to this capture group, and then just match any character:
(#\w+)|.
Use DOTALL mode to also match newline symbols. Replace with $1 (or \1, depending on the tool you are using).
See demo

Answer 3

Strait REGEX Tested in Caret:
#.*[^)]
The above will search for and any given and exclude close parenthesis.
#.*\b
The above here does the same thing in Caret text editor.
How to awk and sed this:
Get usernames as well:
$ awk '/#.*/ {print}' test
katyperry KATY PERRY (#katyperry)
justinbieber Justin Bieber (#justinbieber)
taylorswift13 Taylor Swift (#taylorswift13)
Just the Handle:
$ awk -F "(" '/#.*/ {print$2}' test | sed 's/)//g'
#katyperry
#justinbieber
#taylorswift13
A look at the test file:
$ cat test
1
katyperry KATY PERRY (#katyperry)
Followings 158
Followers 82 085 596
Rating
5
Worst012345678910Best
2
justinbieber Justin Bieber (#justinbieber)
254 399
74 748 878
2
Worst012345678910Best
3
taylorswift13 Taylor Swift (#taylorswift13)
245
70 529 992
Bash Version:
$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin14)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.