正则表达式与特殊字符元字符匹配

Question

I am trying to match certain strings and while I have to escape some special characters it still isn't matching correctly.

I have this

 var first=/.+?(?=\[)/i

which still matches the whole string which needs to only match up to the first [

this is the string business[account]

I need to match business then match account as well. It is for a plugin that be used to get the object notations with these later. Every element has a different attribute.

Answer 1

For something this simple, a lookahead isn't really necessary. Try using a character class like this:

var first = /[^[]+/

This will match one or more of any character other than [ .

If you'd like to work this into a regex that can match both parts of a string like "business[account]" , try this:

/([^[]+)\[([^\]]+)\]/

This will match one or more of any character other than [ , captured in group 1, followed by a [ , followed by one or more of any character other than ] , captured in group 2, followed by ] .

Eg

console.log(/([^[]+)\[([^\]]+)\]/.exec("business[account]"));
// ["business[account]", "business", "account"]

Answer 2

You're almost there; just add groups (with parentheses) to match what you want:

var m = /(.+?)\[(.+?)\]/.exec("business[account]");
console.log("variable: " + m[1], "index: " + m[2]);