How to extract text using Regular expression (RegEx)?

Question

I need some help with regular expressions in JavaScript.

I have the following string.

var str = "SOme TEXT #extract1$ Some more text #extract2$ much more text #extract3$ some junk";

I want to extract all the text between # and $ into an array or object.

Final output would be:

var result = [extract1,extract2,extract3]

extract1, extract2,extract3 can contain any characters like _,@,&,*

Answer 1

Regex for you will be like #(?<extract>[\s\S]*?)\$

Named group ' extract 'will contain the values you want.

As Alex mentioned, if javascript doesnt support named group, we can use numbered group. So modified regex will be #([\s\S]*?)\$ and desired values will be in group number 1.

Answer 2

You can use JavaScript Regular expressions' exec method.

var regex = /\#([^\$]+)\$/g,
    match_arr,
    result = [],
    str = "some #extract1$ more #extract2$ text #extract3$ some junk";
while ((match_arr = regex.exec(str)) != null)
{
   result.push(match_arr[1]);
}
console.log(result);

Reference: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/RegExp/exec

Answer 3

var matches = str.match(/#(.+?)\$/gi);

jsFiddle .