I read through the similar questions that already been asked but I still couldnn't get it right .
http://regexr.com/39b64
\S should return everything on the keyboard except space , tab and enter .
^$ should be a whole match as it starts from ^ and ends with $ .
There was a link that also uses something similar like the above with addition of {0,} which should be infinite letters but it doesn't work on regexr.com when I tested .
Another link suggested to remove the $ and replace it with \z but it doesn't work on regexr.com as well .
I'm planning to user preg_match to see whether a not the username enter is with all characters on the keyboard except space , tab and enter .
Username = "abcCD0123_" valid
Username = "abcCD0123_!##$%^&)_[]-=\',;/`~) valid
Username = " abcd123~!#$##%[];,.;'" invalid
Username = "abcd123~!#$##%[];,.;' " invalid
Username = " abcd123~ !#$##%[];,.;' " invalid
Something like that cause' I read about a question where someone suggested to do the verification matching on the php side instead of html side for security reasons .
edit : I tried ...
/^[\S]+$/
/^[\S]*$/
/^[\S]{0,}$/
/^[^\s\S]+$/
/^[^\s\S]*$/
/^[^\s\S]{0,}$/
/^[A-Za-z0-9~!##$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>?`-=[]\;',./]+$/
/^[A-Za-z0-9~!##$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>?`-=[]\;',./]*$/
/^[A-Za-z0-9~!##$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>?`-=[]\;',./]{0,}$/
( something like this for this i can't remember cause' I modified a lot of times on this one )
You can just check that the line is composed by only non-space characters (demo):
/^\S+$/
Strings with multiple lines
The regex assumes that you are checking a single username at time (what you probably want to do in your code). But as shown in the demo and as described by user3218114 in his answer, if you have a multiple line string, you need to use the m flag to allow ^ and $ to match also for begin end of each line (otherwise it will just match begin/end of the string). This is probably why your tests weren't working.
/^\S+$/m
You need to use m (PCRE_MULTILINE) modifier if you want to use ^ and $
When this modifier is set, the "start of line" and "end of line" constructs match immediately following or immediately before any newline in the subject string, respectively, as well as at the very start and end.
Here is demo to check for any string/line that contains non white space and length is in between 8 to 50
^[^\s]{8,50}$
Online demo
OR
^\S{8,50}$
Online demo
Sample code: (Focus on m modifier)
$re = "/^[^\\s]{8,50}$/m";
$str = "...";
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches);
Based on your examples I suppose you want to have something like that:
/^[a-z0-9_!##$%&^()_\[\]=\\',;\/~`-]+$/i
It's one character group [] which contains all allowed characters. Note, however, that one cannot just put all chars in there, some characters have special meanins in regexp and must be escaped by \ ([,],(),),/ and \ itself). You also have to be careful where to put -. In the case of a-z it means all characters between a and z (including a and z). That's why I put the - char itself at the end.
To match really everything except white-space use /^\S+$/
Related
I have this string:
"Common Waxbill - Estrilda astrild"
How can I write 2 separate regexes for the words before and after the hyphen? The output I would want is:
"Common Waxbill"
and
"Estrilda astrild"
This is quite simple:
.*(?= - ) # matches everything before " - "
(?<= - ).* # matches everything after " - "
See this tutorial on lookaround assertions.
If you cannot use look-behinds, but your string is always in the same format and cannout contain more than the single hyphen, you could use
^[^-]*[^ -] for the first one and \w[^-]*$ for the second one (or [^ -][^-]*$ if the first non-space after the hyphen is not necessarily a word-character.
A little bit of explanation:
^[^-]*[^ -] matches the start of the string (anchor ^), followed by any amount of characters, that are not a hyphen and finally a character thats not hyphen or space (just to exclude the last space from the match).
[^ -][^-]*$ takes the same approach, but the other way around, first matching a character thats neither space nor hyphen, followed by any amount of characters, that are no hyphen and finally the end of the string (anchor $). \w[^-]*$ is basically the same, it uses a stricter \w instead of the [^ -]. This is again used to exclude the whitespace after the hyphen from the match.
Another solution is to string split on the hyphen and remove white space.
Two alternate methods
The main challenge of your Question is that you want two separate items. This means that your process is dependent on another language. RegEx itself does not parse or separate a string; it only explains what we are looking for. The language you are using will make the actual separation. My answer gets your results in PHP, but other languages should have comparable solutions.
If you want to just do the job in your Question, and if you're using PHP...
Method 1: explode("-", $list); -> $array[]
This is useful if your list is longer than two items:
<?php
// Generate our list
$list = "Common Waxbill - Estrilda astrild";
$item_arr = explode("-", $list);
// Iterate each
foreach($item_arr as $item) {
echo $item.'<br>';
}
// See what we have
echo '
<pre>Access array directly:</pre>'.
'<pre>'.$item_arr[0].'x <--notice the trailing space</pre>'.
'<pre>'.$item_arr[1].' <--notice the preceding space</pre>';
...You could clean up each item and reassign them to a new array with trim(). This would get the text your Question asked for (no extra spaces before or after)...
// Create a workable array
$i=0; // Start our array key counter
foreach($item_arr as $item) {
$clean_arr[$i++] = trim($item);
}
// See what we have
echo '
<pre>Access after cleaning:</pre>'.
'<pre>'.$clean_arr[0].'x <--no space</pre>'.
'<pre>'.$clean_arr[1].' <--no space</pre>';
?>
Output:
Common Waxbill
Estrilda astrild
Access array directly:
Common Waxbill x <--notice the trailing space
Estrilda astrild <--notice the preceding space
Access after cleaning:
Common Waxbillx <--no space
Estrilda astrild <--no space
Method 2: substr(strrpos()) & substr(strpos())
This is useful if your list will only have two items:
<?php
// Generate our list
$list = "Common Waxbill - Estrilda astrild";
// Start splitting
$first_item = trim(substr($list, strrpos($list, '-') + 1));
$second_item = trim(substr($list, 0, strpos($list, '-')));
// See what we have
echo "<pre>substr():</pre>
<pre>$first_item</pre>
<pre>$second_item</pre>
";
?>
Output:
substr():
Estrilda astrild
Common Waxbill
Note strrpos() and strpos() are different and each have different syntax.
If you're not using PHP, but you want to do the job in some other language without depending on RegEx, knowing the language would be helpful.
Generally, programming languages come with tools for jobs like this out of box, which is part of why people choose the languages they do.
Learning regex in bash, i am trying to fetch all lines which ends with .com
Initially i did :
cat patternNpara.txt | egrep "^[[:alnum:]]+(.com)$"
why : +matches one or more occurrences, so placing it after alnum should fetch the occurrence of any digit,word or signs but apparently, this logic is failing....
Then i did this : (purely hit-and-try, not applying any logic really...) and it worked
cat patternNpara.txt | egrep "^[[:alnum:]].+(.com)$"
whats confusing me : . matches only single occurrence, then, how am i getting the output...i mean how is it really matching the pattern???
Question : whats the difference between [[:alnum:]]+ and [[:alnum:]].+ (this one has . in it) in the above matching pattern and how its working???
PS : i am looking for a possible explanation...not, try it this way thing... :)
Some test lines for the file patternNpara.txt which are fetched as output!
valid email = abc#abc.com
invalid email = ab#abccom
another invalid = abc#.com
1 : abc,s,11#gmail.com
2: abc.s.11#gmail.com
Looking at your screenshot it seems you're trying to match email address that has # character also which is not included in your regex. You can use this regex:
egrep "[#[:alnum:]]+(\.com)" patternNpara.txt
DIfference between 2 regex:
[[:alnum:]] matches only [a-zA-Z0-9]. If you have # or , then you need to include them in character class as well.
Your 2nd case is including .+ pattern which means 1 or more matches of ANY CHARACTER
If you want to match any lines that end with '.com', you should use
egrep ".*\.com$" file.txt
To match all the following lines
valid email = abc#abc.com
invalid email = ab#abccom
another invalid = abc#.com
1 : abc,s,11#gmail.com
2: abc.s.11#gmail.com
^[[:alnum:]].+(.com)$ will work, but ^[[:alnum:]]+(.com)$ will not. Here is the reasons:
^[[:alnum:]].+(.com)$ means to match strings that start with a a-zA-Z or 0-9, flows two or more any characters, and end with a 'com' (not '.com').
^[[:alnum:]]+(.com)$ means to match strings that start with one or more a-zA-Z or 0-9, flows one character that could be anything, and end with a 'com' (not '.com').
Try this (with "positive-lookahead") :
.+(?=\.com)
Demo :
http://regexr.com?38bo0
I'm very new to regular expression. I want to extract the following string
"109_Admin_RegistrationResponse_20130103.txt"
from this file content, the contents is selected per line:
01-10-13 10:44AM 47 107_Admin_RegistrationDetail_20130111.txt
01-10-13 10:40AM 11 107_Admin_RegistrationResponse_20130111.txt
The regular expression should not pick the second line, only the first line should return a true.
Your Regex has a lot of different mistakes...
Your line does not start with your required filename but you put an ^ there
missing + in your character group [a-zA-Z], hence only able to match a single character
does not include _ in your character group, hence it won't match Admin_RegistrationResponse
missing \ and d{2} would match dd only.
As per M42's answer (which I left out), you also need to escape your dot . too, or it would match 123_abc_12345678atxt too (notice the a before txt)
Your regex should be
\d+_[a-zA-Z_]+_\d{4}\d{2}\d{2}\.txt$
which can be simplified as
\d+_[a-zA-Z_]+_\d{8}\.txt$
as \d{2}\d{2} really look redundant -- unless you want to do with capturing groups, then you would do:
\d+_[a-zA-Z_]+_(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})\.txt$
Remove the anchors and escape the dot:
\d+[a-zA-Z_]+\d{8}\.txt
I'm a newbie in php but i think you can use explode() function in php or any equivalent in your language.
$string = "01-09-13 10:17AM 11 109_Admin_RegistrationResponse_20130103.txt";
$pieces = explode("_", $string);
$stringout = "";
foreach($i = 0;$i<count($pieces);i++){
$stringout = $stringout.$pieces[$i];
}
I'm trying to learn something about regular expressions.
Here is what I'm going to match:
/parent/child
/parent/child?
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/
/parent/child/?
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789
My expression should "grabs" abc123 and def456.
And now just an example about what I'm not going to match ("question mark" is missing):
/parent/child/firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
Well, I built the following expression:
^(?:/parent/child){1}(?:^(?:/\?|\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?
But that doesn't work.
Could you help me to understand what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE 1
Ok, I made other tests.
I'm trying to fix the previous version with something like this:
/parent/child(?:(?:\?|/\?)+(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?)?$
Let me explain my idea:
Must start with /parent/child:
/parent/child
Following group is optional
(?: ... )?
The previous optional group must starts with ? or /?
(?:\?|/\?)+
Optional parameters (I grab values if specified parameters are part of querystring)
(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*)?
End of line
$
Any advice?
UPDATE 2
My solution must be based just on regular expressions.
Just for example, I previously wrote the following one:
/parent/child(?:[?&/]*(?:firstparam=([^&]*)|secondparam=([^&]*)|[^&]*))*$
And that works pretty nice.
But it matches the following input too:
/parent/child/firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
How could I modify the expression in order to not match the previous string?
You didn't specify a language so I'll just usre Perl. So basically instead of matching everything, I just matched exactly what I thought you needed. Correct me if I am wrong please.
while ($subject =~ m/(?<==)\w+?(?=&|\W|$)/g) {
# matched text = $&
}
(?<= # Assert that the regex below can be matched, with the match ending at this position (positive lookbehind)
= # Match the character “=” literally
)
\\w # Match a single character that is a “word character” (letters, digits, and underscores)
+? # Between one and unlimited times, as few times as possible, expanding as needed (lazy)
(?= # Assert that the regex below can be matched, starting at this position (positive lookahead)
# Match either the regular expression below (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)
& # Match the character “&” literally
| # Or match regular expression number 2 below (attempting the next alternative only if this one fails)
\\W # Match a single character that is a “non-word character”
| # Or match regular expression number 3 below (the entire group fails if this one fails to match)
\$ # Assert position at the end of the string (or before the line break at the end of the string, if any)
)
Output:
This regex will work as long as you know what your parameter names are going to be and you're sure that they won't change.
\/parent\/child\/?\?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?
Whilst regex is not the best solution for this (the above code examples will be far more efficient, as string functions are way faster than regexes) this will work if you need a regex solution with up to 3 parameters. Out of interest, why must the solution use only regex?
In any case, this regex will match the following strings:
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789
It will now only match those containing query string parameters, and put them into capture groups for you.
What language are you using to process your matches?
If you are using preg_match with PHP, you can get the whole match as well as capture groups in an array with
preg_match($regex, $string, $matches);
Then you can access the whole match with $matches[0] and the rest with $matches[1], $matches[2], etc.
If you want to add additional parameters you'll also need to add them in the regex too, and add additional parts to get your data. For example, if you had
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&fourthparam=jkl01112&thirdparam=ghi789
The regex will become
\/parent\/child\/?\?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?(?:(?:firstparam|secondparam|thirdparam|fourthparam)\=([\w]+)&?)?
This will become a bit more tedious to maintain as you add more parameters, though.
You can optionally include ^ $ at the start and end if the multi-line flag is enabled. If you also need to match the whole lines without query strings, wrap this whole regex in a non-capture group (including ^ $) and add
|(?:^\/parent\/child\/?\??$)
to the end.
You're not escaping the /s in your regex for starters and using {1} for a single repetition of something is unnecessary; you only use those when you want more than one repetition or a range of repetitions.
And part of what you're trying to do is simply not a good use of a regex. I'll show you an easier way to deal with that: you want to use something like split and put the information into a hash that you can check the contents of later. Because you didn't specify a language, I'm just going to use Perl for my example, but every language I know with regexes also has easy access to hashes and something like split, so this should be easy enough to port:
# I picked an example to show how this works.
my $route = '/parent/child/?first=123&second=345&third=678';
my %params; # I'm going to put those URL parameters in this hash.
# Perl has a way to let me avoid escaping the /s, but I wanted an example that
# works in other languages too.
if ($route =~ m/\/parent\/child\/\?(.*)/) { # Use the regex for this part
print "Matched route.\n";
# But NOT for this part.
my $query = $1; # $1 is a Perl thing. It contains what (.*) matched above.
my #items = split '&', $query; # Each item is something like param=123
foreach my $item (#items) {
my ($param, $value) = split '=', $item;
$params{$param} = $value; # Put the parameters in a hash for easy access.
print "$param set to $value \n";
}
}
# Now you can check the parameter values and do whatever you need to with them.
# And you can add new parameters whenever you want, etc.
if ($params{'first'} eq '123') {
# Do whatever
}
My solution:
/(?:\w+/)*(?:(?:\w+)?\?(?:\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)?|\w+|)
Explain:
/(?:\w+/)* match /parent/child/ or /parent/
(?:\w+)?\?(?:\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)? match child?firstparam=abc123 or ?firstparam=abc123 or ?
\w+ match text like child
..|) match nothing(empty)
If you need only query string, pattern would reduce such as:
/(?:\w+/)*(?:\w+)?\?(\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)
If you want to get every parameter from query string, this is a Ruby sample:
re = /\/(?:\w+\/)*(?:\w+)?\?(\w+=\w+(?:&\w+=\w+)*)/
s = '/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789'
if m = s.match(re)
query_str = m[1] # now, you can 100% trust this string
query_str.scan(/(\w+)=(\w+)/) do |param,value| #grab parameter
printf("%s, %s\n", param, value)
end
end
output
secondparam, def456
firstparam, abc123
thirdparam, ghi789
This script will help you.
First, i check, is there any symbol like ?.
Then, i kill first part of line (left from ?).
Next, i split line by &, where each value splitted by =.
my $r = q"/parent/child
/parent/child?
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456
/parent/child?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child?thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/
/parent/child/?
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?firstparam=abc123&secondparam=def456
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789&secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123
/parent/child/?secondparam=def456&firstparam=abc123&thirdparam=ghi789
/parent/child/?thirdparam=ghi789";
for my $string(split /\n/, $r){
if (index($string,'?')!=-1){
substr($string, 0, index($string,'?')+1,"");
#say "string = ".$string;
if (index($string,'=')!=-1){
my #params = map{$_ = [split /=/, $_];}split/\&/, $string;
$"="\n";
say "$_->[0] === $_->[1]" for (#params);
say "######next########";
}
else{
#print "there is no params!"
}
}
else{
#say "there is no params!";
}
}
How do I get the substring " It's big \"problem " using a regular expression?
s = ' function(){ return " It\'s big \"problem "; }';
/"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*"/
Works in The Regex Coach and PCRE Workbench.
Example of test in JavaScript:
var s = ' function(){ return " Is big \\"problem\\", \\no? "; }';
var m = s.match(/"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*"/);
if (m != null)
alert(m);
This one comes from nanorc.sample available in many linux distros. It is used for syntax highlighting of C style strings
\"(\\.|[^\"])*\"
As provided by ePharaoh, the answer is
/"([^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"/
To have the above apply to either single quoted or double quoted strings, use
/"([^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"|\'([^\'\\]*(\\.[^\'\\]*)*)\'/
Most of the solutions provided here use alternative repetition paths i.e. (A|B)*.
You may encounter stack overflows on large inputs since some pattern compiler implements this using recursion.
Java for instance: http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6337993
Something like this:
"(?:[^"\\]*(?:\\.)?)*", or the one provided by Guy Bedford will reduce the amount of parsing steps avoiding most stack overflows.
/(["\']).*?(?<!\\)(\\\\)*\1/is
should work with any quoted string
"(?:\\"|.)*?"
Alternating the \" and the . passes over escaped quotes while the lazy quantifier *? ensures that you don't go past the end of the quoted string. Works with .NET Framework RE classes
/"(?:[^"\\]++|\\.)*+"/
Taken straight from man perlre on a Linux system with Perl 5.22.0 installed.
As an optimization, this regex uses the 'posessive' form of both + and * to prevent backtracking, for it is known beforehand that a string without a closing quote wouldn't match in any case.
This one works perfect on PCRE and does not fall with StackOverflow.
"(.*?[^\\])??((\\\\)+)?+"
Explanation:
Every quoted string starts with Char: " ;
It may contain any number of any characters: .*? {Lazy match}; ending with non escape character [^\\];
Statement (2) is Lazy(!) optional because string can be empty(""). So: (.*?[^\\])??
Finally, every quoted string ends with Char("), but it can be preceded with even number of escape sign pairs (\\\\)+; and it is Greedy(!) optional: ((\\\\)+)?+ {Greedy matching}, bacause string can be empty or without ending pairs!
An option that has not been touched on before is:
Reverse the string.
Perform the matching on the reversed string.
Re-reverse the matched strings.
This has the added bonus of being able to correctly match escaped open tags.
Lets say you had the following string; String \"this "should" NOT match\" and "this \"should\" match"
Here, \"this "should" NOT match\" should not be matched and "should" should be.
On top of that this \"should\" match should be matched and \"should\" should not.
First an example.
// The input string.
const myString = 'String \\"this "should" NOT match\\" and "this \\"should\\" match"';
// The RegExp.
const regExp = new RegExp(
// Match close
'([\'"])(?!(?:[\\\\]{2})*[\\\\](?![\\\\]))' +
'((?:' +
// Match escaped close quote
'(?:\\1(?=(?:[\\\\]{2})*[\\\\](?![\\\\])))|' +
// Match everything thats not the close quote
'(?:(?!\\1).)' +
'){0,})' +
// Match open
'(\\1)(?!(?:[\\\\]{2})*[\\\\](?![\\\\]))',
'g'
);
// Reverse the matched strings.
matches = myString
// Reverse the string.
.split('').reverse().join('')
// '"hctam "\dluohs"\ siht" dna "\hctam TON "dluohs" siht"\ gnirtS'
// Match the quoted
.match(regExp)
// ['"hctam "\dluohs"\ siht"', '"dluohs"']
// Reverse the matches
.map(x => x.split('').reverse().join(''))
// ['"this \"should\" match"', '"should"']
// Re order the matches
.reverse();
// ['"should"', '"this \"should\" match"']
Okay, now to explain the RegExp.
This is the regexp can be easily broken into three pieces. As follows:
# Part 1
(['"]) # Match a closing quotation mark " or '
(?! # As long as it's not followed by
(?:[\\]{2})* # A pair of escape characters
[\\] # and a single escape
(?![\\]) # As long as that's not followed by an escape
)
# Part 2
((?: # Match inside the quotes
(?: # Match option 1:
\1 # Match the closing quote
(?= # As long as it's followed by
(?:\\\\)* # A pair of escape characters
\\ #
(?![\\]) # As long as that's not followed by an escape
) # and a single escape
)| # OR
(?: # Match option 2:
(?!\1). # Any character that isn't the closing quote
)
)*) # Match the group 0 or more times
# Part 3
(\1) # Match an open quotation mark that is the same as the closing one
(?! # As long as it's not followed by
(?:[\\]{2})* # A pair of escape characters
[\\] # and a single escape
(?![\\]) # As long as that's not followed by an escape
)
This is probably a lot clearer in image form: generated using Jex's Regulex
Image on github (JavaScript Regular Expression Visualizer.)
Sorry, I don't have a high enough reputation to include images, so, it's just a link for now.
Here is a gist of an example function using this concept that's a little more advanced: https://gist.github.com/scagood/bd99371c072d49a4fee29d193252f5fc#file-matchquotes-js
here is one that work with both " and ' and you easily add others at the start.
("|')(?:\\\1|[^\1])*?\1
it uses the backreference (\1) match exactley what is in the first group (" or ').
http://www.regular-expressions.info/backref.html
One has to remember that regexps aren't a silver bullet for everything string-y. Some stuff are simpler to do with a cursor and linear, manual, seeking. A CFL would do the trick pretty trivially, but there aren't many CFL implementations (afaik).
A more extensive version of https://stackoverflow.com/a/10786066/1794894
/"([^"\\]{50,}(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"|\'[^\'\\]{50,}(\\.[^\'\\]*)*\'|“[^”\\]{50,}(\\.[^“\\]*)*”/
This version also contains
Minimum quote length of 50
Extra type of quotes (open “ and close ”)
If it is searched from the beginning, maybe this can work?
\"((\\\")|[^\\])*\"
I faced a similar problem trying to remove quoted strings that may interfere with parsing of some files.
I ended up with a two-step solution that beats any convoluted regex you can come up with:
line = line.replace("\\\"","\'"); // Replace escaped quotes with something easier to handle
line = line.replaceAll("\"([^\"]*)\"","\"x\""); // Simple is beautiful
Easier to read and probably more efficient.
If your IDE is IntelliJ Idea, you can forget all these headaches and store your regex into a String variable and as you copy-paste it inside the double-quote it will automatically change to a regex acceptable format.
example in Java:
String s = "\"en_usa\":[^\\,\\}]+";
now you can use this variable in your regexp or anywhere.
(?<="|')(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*(?="|')
" It\'s big \"problem "
match result:
It\'s big \"problem
("|')(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*("|')
" It\'s big \"problem "
match result:
" It\'s big \"problem "
Messed around at regexpal and ended up with this regex: (Don't ask me how it works, I barely understand even tho I wrote it lol)
"(([^"\\]?(\\\\)?)|(\\")+)+"