Simple regex url-related matching help

Question

Hi,

Take the following URI:

http:\/\/.*\.google\.com/search/results\.php*

I am simply trying to match all single forward slashes ( / ) between two alphanumeric characters in a given URI. In the case above, the two just before search and results. Could you point me in the right direction?

EDIT

The intention is to do search and replace using Notepad++.

Answer 1

Not really sure what you're doing there, as your “URI” is seemingly already a regex.

But to match a slash (/) embedded between alphanumeric characters, you can use:

/(?<=[a-zA-Z0-9]/)(?=[a-zA-Z0-9])

A positive lookbehind and lookahead make sure that the slash is indeed between two alphanumeric characters.

Test in Windows PowerShell:

PS Home:\> $uri='http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2259778/simple-regex-url-related-matching-help'
PS Home:\> [regex]::matches($uri, '(?<=[a-zA-Z0-9])/(?=[a-zA-Z0-9])') | ft -auto

Groups   Success   Captures   Index   Length   Value
------   -------   --------   -----   ------   -----
{/}         True   {/}           24        1   /
{/}         True   {/}           34        1   /
{/}         True   {/}           42        1   /

ETA: If I understood you correctly you want to replace slashes embedded between two alphanumeric characters by \/ to escape them, right?

Then replacing the following

([a-zA-Z-0-9])/([a-zA-Z-0-9])

by

\1\\/\2

should work. This doesn't capture the slash only (as above method; due to limitations of Notepad++) therefore we have to reinsert the surrounding characters as well.

However, you probably want to search for unescaped slashes anyway. So replacing

([^\\])/

by

\1\\/

would make more sense, I think. This searches for a slash that is not preceded by a backslash.

Answer 2

http:\/\/..google.com\/search\/results.php