正则表达式匹配括号内的正则表达式

Question

I'm working on a regex that must match only the text inside quotes but not in a comment, my macthes must only the strings in bold

< "love" ;>

>/*"love"*/<

<> 'love' <>

"lo

more love

ve"

I'm stunck on this:

/(?:((\"|\')(.|\n)*?(\"|\')))(?=(?:\/\**\*\/))/gm

The first one (?:((\\"|\\')(.|\\n)*?(\\"|\\'))) match all the strings the second one (?=(?:\\/\\**\\*\\/)) doesn't match text inside quotes inside /* "mystring" */

bit my logic is cleary wrong

Any suggestion?

Thanks

Answer 1

Maybe you just need to use a negative lookahead to check for the comment end */ ?

But first, I'd split the string into separate lines

 var arrayOfLines = input_str.split(/\r?\n/);

or, without empty lines:

 var arrayOfLines = input_str.match(/[^\r\n]+/g);

and then use this regex :

["']([^'"]+)["'](?!.*\\*\\/)

Sample code:

var rebuilt_string = ''
var re = /["']([^'"]+)["'](?!.*\*\/)/g; 
var subst = '<b>$1</b>'; 

for (i = 0; i < arrayOfLines.length; i++)
{
   rebuilt_string = rebuilt_string + arrayOfLines[i].replace(re, subst) + "\r\n";
}

Answer 2

The way to avoid commented parts is to match them before. The global pattern looks like this:

/(capture parts to avoid)|target/

Then use a callback function for the replacement (when the capture group exists, return the match without change, otherwise, replace the match with what you want.

Example:

var result = text.replace(/(\/\*[^*]*(?:\*+(?!\/)[^*]*)*\*\/)|"[^"\\]*(?:\\[\s\S][^"\\]*)*"|'[^'\\]*(?:\\[\s\S][^'\\]*)*'/g,
    function (m, g1) {
        if (g1) return g1;
        return '<b>' + m + '</b>';
});