A regular expression to match a string delimited by characters that does not contain the delimiters

Question

I'm looking for the regex expression for a string matching a string starting with a ; and ending with a :, that contain neither ; nor :

For example ";zreazer:" should match but ";raz:er:" or ";er;:" should not.

Any idea? :) Thanks in advance, I tried some with ^ and ?! symbols but it didn't work out very well.

[`;[^;:]*?:`](https://regex101.com/r/SMpnMx/1) something like that? — cs95, Jul 31 '17 at 23:10
Actually, the greedy vs non-greedy thing is irrelevant here, because you're matching right to the end of the string. I'd do this without the `?`, just for simplicity. — Dawood ibn Kareem, Jul 31 '17 at 23:26

cs95 · Answer 1 · 2017-07-31T23:45:05.303

2

I believe you're looking for

;[^;:]*:

; and : are the delimiters. [^;:] will match any string in between the delimiters that does not include these delimiters.

Here's a Regex101 demo. I've added double quotes to the expression to make it obvious.

A good reference for regular expressions can be found here in the Python docs.

edited Jul 31 '17 at 23:45

answered Jul 31 '17 at 23:18

cs95

What exactly does non-greedy match mean? – MichalH Jul 31 '17 at 23:20
1

@Mike This link will answer your question much better than I can in the comments: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2301285/what-do-lazy-and-greedy-mean-in-the-context-of-regular-expressions – cs95 Jul 31 '17 at 23:21
1

What is the point of making it non-greedy here? You are looking for string which starts with `;`, ends with `:` and has no `;:` between. – Pshemo Jul 31 '17 at 23:24
@Pshemo Point. Edited :] – cs95 Jul 31 '17 at 23:45

1 Answers1