Javascript Regex match text between tildes

Question

I feel like an idiot because I've spent a long time trying to find a regex that will work.

String: ~05276~^~0500~^~Turkey...

The ... means that there can be an unlimited number of characters after. What I want is the first tilde delimited number without the tildes. I'm trying to pull some data from a text file, and I think that I can figure the rest out if I can understand how to do this.

Here's my regex as it stands: /^~([\\d]+)~/

This is what I'm getting:

[ '~05276~',
 '05276',
 index: 0,
 input: '~05276~^~0500~^~Turkey...' ]

When I use the g operator ( /^~([\\d]+)~/g ), I'm only getting the ~05276~ , and what I want is the 05726 (no tildes).

I've found a few different posts and resources, but I can't seem to figure out why this isn't working as I expect. Here's what I found:

Javascript regex - how to get text between curly brackets

Is JavaScript/NodeJS capable of this?

Edit:

Here's my code:

lineReader.eachLine(file, function (line) {
    var entry = {};

    entry.id = line.match(/^~([\d]+)~/);

    console.log(entry);
});

lineReader is working properly and returns a line like in my example string above.

Answer 1

You'r regex is (almost) fine, but you're probably not using it right. Here's what I'd do if I wanted an array of the numbers:

 var array = [];
 yourString.replace(/~(\d+)~/g, function(_, n) { array.push(n); });

What you really don't need is that leading "^" anchor.

Answer 2

You only need the regex /\\d+/ in order to match the first number after tilde in your example. Your method would then be:

lineReader.eachLine(file, function (line) {
    var entry = {};
    entry.id = line.match(/\d+/);
    console.log(entry);
});

With input "~05276~^~0500~^~Turkey" you will get the result "05276" .

Regarding the array answer you get, it's because you have parentheses, ie a capture group. If it's a match the group captured, starting at the leftmost parenthesis -- (\\d+) in your case -- will reside in the second slot of the result array. The first slot has the full match, which in your case includes tildes.