正则表达式在数字之后或之前立即查找单词

Question

I want to find the month in a date (string format) that is immediately before or after the year (which is expressed always in 4 digits). For instance

"Issued May 2018" -> May

"Issued 2018 May" -> May

"Rilasciato ad Agosto 2018" -> Agosto

"Data di scadenza: Agosto 2018" -> Agosto

I put here different combinations because I have strings with different languages, and in every country has its different way to put the data format (month followed by year or vice versa)

Is it possible to detect the month (that can be expressed in different languages) using the regex?

Answer 1

I don't think it's the best way to do it but you can try to use something like:

(([A-Z]\w+)(\s\d{4}))|((\d{4}\s)([A-Z]\w+))

It's matching with the following conditions:

• The month is next to the year (4 digits format)
• There is a whitespace between month and year
• The month start with a capital letter

But pay attention to the whole string because if you have something like: "Issued 2018 May" The regex will match with the wrong word due to the capital letter in "Issued"