RegEx to select everything between two characters?

Question

I am trying to write a regex that selects everything between two characters.

For example, when the regex encounters a '§' I want it to select everything after the '§' sign, up until the point that the regex encounters a ';'. I tried with a lookbehind and lookahead, but they don't really do the trick.

So for example " § 1-2 bla; " should return " 1-2 bla".

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Please specify the technology in which you are working, as regex has many "flavours" with slightly different syntaxes and capabilities. — Jay, Jul 26 '10 at 14:08
Wait, I missed this first time around... "I tried with a lookbehind and lookahead, but they don't really do the trick." -- why not? what went wrong? Is this JavaScript? — Peter Boughton, Jul 26 '10 at 14:54
Because I'm new to RegEx and couldn't really figure it out.. It's RegEx in Actionscript 3, and it does really weird things from time to time :) thanks for your answers everyone, I kind of got things working ! — Jaaq, Jul 27 '10 at 07:50

score 70 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 26 '10 at 14:10

70

How about

"§([^;]*);"

The selected characters between the § and ; are available as match group 1.

answered Jul 26 '10 at 14:10

mdma

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This worked for me. But out of curiosity, it also worked without the trailing semi-colon. Why is it necessary? – uesports135 Jul 31 '15 at 18:04
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Yes, the trailing semi-colon isn't required. Works fine without that too. – MixCoded Nov 27 '17 at 09:07
If using in VSCode, remove the trailing semi-colon and the quotes – Andre Ravazzi Jul 25 '23 at 18:06

Gopi · Answer 2 · 2010-07-26T14:20:25.573

43

Use this regex

(?<=§).*?(?=;)

edited Jul 26 '10 at 14:20

answered Jul 26 '10 at 14:10

Gopi

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Not compatible with JavaScript – TetraDev Dec 05 '17 at 21:38
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It is compatible with ECMAScript 2018 and newer. See a [related thread about matching a string between two strings](https://stackoverflow.com/a/40782646/3832970). – Wiktor Stribiżew Mar 18 '19 at 09:16
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This works for my case for strings like `"_Åä³¢±Í¸¶°³"` between two quotes while the other answers don't. – SagunKho Mar 23 '19 at 11:54

SilentGhost · Answer 3 · 2010-07-26T14:32:39.540

19

For a simple case this should do:

§(.*);

It might need to be modified if you don't want to allow nesting:

§(.*?);

edited Jul 26 '10 at 14:32

answered Jul 26 '10 at 14:09

SilentGhost

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This isn't quite correct - the `.*` is greedy, so the expression will match upto the *last* `;` encountered, not the first one. – Peter Boughton Jul 26 '10 at 14:30
@Peter: it might not be the issue for OP, and it might be what OP actually wants. – SilentGhost Jul 26 '10 at 14:31
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Well based on "up until the point that the regex encounters a ';'" -- I take that to mean it *shouldn't* be greedy. – Peter Boughton Jul 26 '10 at 14:53
@Peter: well based on given example it doesn't matter if quantifier is greedy or not. – SilentGhost Jul 26 '10 at 15:09
Exactly what I needed to clean out some extraneous decimal values. – monsto Mar 19 '19 at 08:33

FlyingZipper · Answer 4 · 2018-12-31T01:43:37.963

If you have multiple § (char example) use : §([^§]*)§

It will ignore everything between two § and only take what's between the 2 special char, so if you have something like §What§ kind of §bear§ is best, it will output: §what§ , §bear§

What happening? lets dissect the expression § then ([^§]*) then §

1- match § char
2- match anything but § [^§] 0 or more times *
match § char

Hope it helps !

RegEx to select everything between two characters?

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