Regex to find words that start with a specific character

Question

I am trying to find words starts with a specific character like:

Lorem ipsum #text Second lorem ipsum. How #are You. It's ok. Done. Something #else now.

I need to get all words starts with "#". so my expected results are #text, #are, #else

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Search for:

• something that is not a word character then
• #
• some word characters

So try this:

/(?<!\w)#\w+/

Or in C# it would look like this:

string s = "Lorem ipsum #text Second lorem ipsum. How #are You. It's ok. Done. Something #else now.";
foreach (Match match in Regex.Matches(s, @"(?<!\w)#\w+"))
{
    Console.WriteLine(match.Value);
}

Output:

#text
#are
#else

Answer 2

Match a word starting with # after a white space or the beginning of a line. The last word boundary in not necessary depending on your usage.

/(?:^|\s)\#(\w+)\b/

The parentheses will capture your word in a group. Now, it depends on the language how you apply this regex.

The (?:...) is a non-capturing group.

Answer 3

Try this #(\S+)\s?

Answer 4

var re = /#\S+/g;

var matches = [];
var match;
while(match = re.exec("Lorem ipsum #text Second lorem ipsum. How #are You. It's ok. Done. Something #else now"))
{
    matches.push(match[0]);
}

alert(matches);

Output: #text,#are,#else