Accessing first Nth regex group

Question

I have written a (?!,)(.*?)(?=,) regex in JavaScript .

This regex returns 20 matching groups, but I want to get first 5 groups.

How can I do this?

This depends on the language you're using, mostly `$1`, `$2`, ... is used — Tushar, Jul 21 '15 at 12:08
Sounds like you want [`.slice()`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/slice) — CrayonViolent, Jul 21 '15 at 12:25
Answered by : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432493/how-do-you-access-the-matched-groups-in-a-javascript-regular-expression — Astrogat, Jul 21 '15 at 12:25

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 21 '15 at 12:25

Just use match/split and then slice the array to get the necessary items:

var re = /[^,]+/g; 
var str = 'word1, word2, word3, word4, word5, word6, word7, word8, word9, word10, word11, word12, ';

alert(str.match(re).slice(0, 5));

var splts = str.split(',').slice(0,5);
alert(splts);

Since you are just looking for strings between commas, I suggest using [^,]+ regex.

Accessing first Nth regex group

1 Answers1