Regex multiple matches on multiple lines

Question

I have this data, effectively a markdown table:

blah blah blah
| Tables        | Are           | Cool  |
| ------------- |:-------------:| -----:|
| col 3 is      | right-aligned | $1600 |
| col 2 is      | centered      |   $12 |
| zebra stripes | are neat      |    $1 |
blah blah
blah

I would like to do a regex match and get the values between the pipes out.

Ideally, I'd like to get a group for each line, and then a subgroup with each 'cell'.

Even more ideally, I'd like to make sure there are the same number of cells/columns in each row.

My attempts either match the last cell in the row/table, or every second cell. This just bombs out totally: \\|(?:([^\\r\\n\\|]*)\\|)+\\r?\\n\\|(?:(\\:?-+\\:?)\\|)+\\r?\\n(\\|(?:([^\\r\\n\\|]*)\\|)+\\r?\\n)+

This is also pretty dismal: ^#(?:([^#]+)#)+$

Looking for a solution in javascript or C#.

Answer 1

I'd go in js with something like this, but only if you don't need the regex for something else ;-)

var yourStr
var groups = yourStr.split('\n')
var cells = yourStr.split('|')
if (cells.length < asItShouldBe) { ... }
var cell1 = cells[1]
var cell2 = cells[2]
...

Answer 2

Try

 var input = document.querySelectorAll("pre")[0].innerText; var output = input.match(/\\s+|\\w+-\\w+|\\w+|\\W+\\d+|\\d+/gi) .map(function(word, i) { return word.replace(/\\||\\s|--+|\\s-\\s+|:/gi, "") }); document.body.insertBefore( document.createTextNode(output.join(" ")) , document.getElementsByTagName("hr")[0] ); 

 <hr /> <pre> blah blah blah | Tables | Are | Cool | | ------------- |:-------------:| -----:| | col 3 is | right-aligned | $1600 | | col 2 is | centered | $12 | | zebra stripes | are neat | $1 | blah blah blah </pre>