What regex matches string within wordbounds, but not next to '#' - regex

I want to find the number of occurrences of a certain string in a text. The string can match the beginning of a sentence or at the end before the '.'. So I thought of:
\bMY_STRING\b
However, i do not want to match parts of an email address. That is, the string should not be next to the # (at-sign, at-symbol, ampersat, apetail, arroba, atmark, at symbol, commercial at, monkey tail or whatever term makes it easier to find this using a search engine).
So, 'example' should not be counted in 'test#example.com'.
What should replace the \b in my expression to match wordbreaks, except at #?

If your regex flavors knows lookbehind assertions (most do, but JavaScript and Ruby 1.8 only support lookahead), you can replace all \bs with this:
(?<!#)\b(?!#)
This matches a word boundary only if it's not before or after a #.

I think you can use the lookbehind and lookahead options in regex:
#\b(?<![#])YOUR_TEXT(?![#])\b)#
Example

You can use:
[^\#]
which means: match any character except #

Related

Match a part of a string using regex

I have a string and would like to match a part of it.
The string is Accept: multipart/mixedPrivacy: nonePAI: <sip:4168755400#1.1.1.238>From: <sip:4168755400#1.1.1.238>;tag=5430960946837208_c1b08.2.3.1602135087396.0_1237422_3895152To: <sip:4168755400#1.1.1.238>
I want to match PAI: <sip:4168755400#
the whitespace can be a word so i would like to use .* but if i used that it matches most of the string
The example on that link is showing what i'm matching if i use the whitespace instead of .*
(PAI: <sip:)((?:\([2-9]\d{2}\)\ ?|[2-9]\d{2}(?:\-?|\ ?))[2-9]\d{2}[- ]?\d{4})#
The example on that link is showing what i'm trying to achieve with .* but it should only match PAI: <sip:4168755400#
(PAI:.*<sip:)((?:\([2-9]\d{2}\)\ ?|[2-9]\d{2}(?:\-?|\ ?))[2-9]\d{2}[- ]?\d{4})#
I tried lookaround but failing.
Any idea?
thanks
Matching the single space can be updated by using a character class matching either a space or a word character and repeat that 1 or more times to match at least a single occurrence.
Note that you don't have to escape the spaces, and in both occasions you can use an optional character class matching either a space or hyphen [ -]?
If you want the match only, you can omit the 2 capturing groups if you want to.
(PAI:[ \w]+<sip:)((?:\([2-9]\d{2}\) ?|[2-9]\d{2}[ -]?)[2-9]\d{2}[- ]?\d{4})#
Regex demo
The regex should be like
PAI:.*?(<sip:.*?#)
Explanation:
PAI:.*? find the word PAI: and after the word it can be anything (.*) but ? is used to indicate that it should match as few as possible before it found the next expression.
(<sip:.*?#) capturing group that we want the result.
<sip:.*?# find <sip: and after the word it can be anything .*? before it found #.
Example

How to create proper regular expression to find last character which I want to?

I need to create regex to find last underscore in string like 012344_2.0224.71_3 or 012354_5.00123.AR_3.335_8
I have wanted find last part with expression [^.]+$ and then find underscore at found element but I can not handle it.
I hope you can help me :)
Just use a negative character class [^_] that will match everything except an underscore (this helps to ensure no other underscores are found afterwards) and end of string $
Pattern would look as such:
(_)[^_]*$
The final underscore _ is in a capturing group, so you are wanting to return the submatch. You would replace the group 1 (your underscore).
See it live: Regex101
Notice the green highlighted portion on Regex101, this is your submatch and is what would be replaced.
The simplest solution I can imagine is using .*\K_, however not all regex flavours support \K.
If not, another idea would be to use _(?=[^_]*$)
You have a demo of the first and second option.
Explanation:
.*\K_: Fetches any character until an underscore. Since the * quantifier is greedy, It will match until the last underscore. Then \K discards the previous match and then we match the underscore.
_(?=[^_]*$): Fetch an underscore preceeded by non-underscore characters until the end of the line
If you want nothing but the "net" (i.e., nothing matched except the last underscore), use positive lookahead to check that no more underscores are in the string:
/_(?=[^_]*$)/gm
Demo
The pattern [^.]+$ matches not a dot 1+ times and then asserts the end of the string. The will give you the matches 71_3 and 335_8
What you want to match is an underscore when there are no more underscores following.
One way to do that is using a negative lookahead (?!.*_) if that is supported which asserts what is at the right does not match any character followed by an underscore
_(?!.*_)
Pattern demo

RegEx lookahead but not immediately following

I am trying to match terms such as the Dutch ge-berg-te. berg is a noun by itself, and ge...te is a circumfix, i.e. geberg does not exist, nor does bergte. gebergte does. What I want is a RegEx that matches berg or gebergte, working with a lookaround. I was thinking this would work
\b(?i)(ge(?=te))?berg(te)?\b
But it doesn't. I am guessing because a lookahead only checks the immediate following characters, and not across characters. Is there any way to match characters with a lookahead withouth the constraint that those characters have to be immediately behind the others?
Valid matches would be:
Berg
berg
Gebergte
gebergte
Invalid matches could be:
Geberg
geberg
Bergte
bergte
ge-/Ge- and -te always have to occur together. Note that I want to try this with a lookahead. I know it can be done simpler, but I want to see if its methodologically possible to do something like this.
Here is one non-lookaround based regex:
\b(berg|gebergte)\b
Use it with i (ignore case) flag. This regex uses alternation and word boundary to search for complete words berg OR gebergte.
RegEx Demo
Lookaround based regex:
(?<=\bge)berg(?=te\b)|\bberg\b
This regex used a lookahead and lookbehind to search for berg preceded by ge and followed by te. Alternatively it matches complete word berg using word boundary asserter \b which is also 0-width asserter like anchors ^ and $.
To generally forbid a sign, you can put the negative lookaround to the beginning of a string and combine it with random number of other signs before the string you want to forbid:
regex: don't match if containing a specific string
^(?!.\*720).*
This will not match, if the string contains 720, but else match everything else.

Regular expression for prefix exclusion

I am trying to extract gmail.com from a passage where I want only those string match that don't start with #.
Example: abc#gmail.com (don't match this); www.gmail.com (match this)
I tried the following: (?!#)gmail\.com but this did not work. This is matching both the cases highlighted in the example above. Any suggestions?
You want a negative lookbehind if your regex supports it, like (?<!#)gmail\.com and add \bs to avoid matching foogmail.comz, like: (?<!#)\bgmail\.com\b
[^#\s]*(?<!#)\bgmail\.com\b
assuming you want to find strings in a longer text body, not validate entire strings.
Explanation:
[^#\s]* # match any number of non-#, non-space characters
(?<!#) # assert that the previous character isn't an #
\b # match a word boundary (so we don't match hogmail.com)
gmail\.com # match gmail.com
\b # match a word boundary
On a first glance, the (?<!#) lookbehind assertion appears unnecessary, but it isn't - otherwise the gmail.com part of abc#gmail.com would match.
Use this regular expression using negative lookbehind:
/^.*?(?<!#)gmail\.com$/

How to negate the whole regex?

I have a regex, for example (ma|(t){1}). It matches ma and t and doesn't match bla.
I want to negate the regex, thus it must match bla and not ma and t, by adding something to this regex. I know I can write bla, the actual regex is however more complex.
Use negative lookaround: (?!pattern)
Positive lookarounds can be used to assert that a pattern matches. Negative lookarounds is the opposite: it's used to assert that a pattern DOES NOT match. Some flavor supports assertions; some puts limitations on lookbehind, etc.
Links to regular-expressions.info
Lookahead and Lookbehind Zero-Width Assertions
Flavor comparison
See also
How do I convert CamelCase into human-readable names in Java?
Regex for all strings not containing a string?
A regex to match a substring that isn’t followed by a certain other substring.
More examples
These are attempts to come up with regex solutions to toy problems as exercises; they should be educational if you're trying to learn the various ways you can use lookarounds (nesting them, using them to capture, etc):
codingBat plusOut using regex
codingBat repeatEnd using regex
codingbat wordEnds using regex
Assuming you only want to disallow strings that match the regex completely (i.e., mmbla is okay, but mm isn't), this is what you want:
^(?!(?:m{2}|t)$).*$
(?!(?:m{2}|t)$) is a negative lookahead; it says "starting from the current position, the next few characters are not mm or t, followed by the end of the string." The start anchor (^) at the beginning ensures that the lookahead is applied at the beginning of the string. If that succeeds, the .* goes ahead and consumes the string.
FYI, if you're using Java's matches() method, you don't really need the the ^ and the final $, but they don't do any harm. The $ inside the lookahead is required, though.
\b(?=\w)(?!(ma|(t){1}))\b(\w*)
this is for the given regex.
the \b is to find word boundary.
the positive look ahead (?=\w) is here to avoid spaces.
the negative look ahead over the original regex is to prevent matches of it.
and finally the (\w*) is to catch all the words that are left.
the group that will hold the words is group 3.
the simple (?!pattern) will not work as any sub-string will match
the simple ^(?!(?:m{2}|t)$).*$ will not work as it's granularity is full lines
This regexp math your condition:
^.*(?<!ma|t)$
Look at how it works:
https://regex101.com/r/Ryg2FX/1
Apply this if you use laravel.
Laravel has a not_regex where field under validation must not match the given regular expression; uses the PHP preg_match function internally.
'email' => 'not_regex:/^.+$/i'