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Regular expression to extract text between two sets of characters (Javascript)

Answer 1

+2 A:

why not just do

var toExtract = "start-extractThis-234";
var extracted = null;
var split = toExtract.split("-");
if(split.length === 3){
   extracted = split[1];
}

mkoryak 2010-04-22 15:12:47

+1 for this. As long as the string format will always be like this then `split` is a much better choice than a regex match. `if` statement might be a bit overkill though, `extracted = split[1];` or `if (extracted = split[1])` should be enough for most situations.

Andy E 2010-04-22 15:20:41

yeah the if is a bit overkill, i wanted to be verbose

mkoryak 2010-04-22 15:24:20

Accepted due to simplicity, I was hoping to learn a bit of funky Regex but I can't turn down readability. I shouldn't have been making this complicated!

optician 2010-04-22 15:25:52

@optician: don't worry, you'll get your chance at learning some funky regex sooner or later ;-)

Andy E 2010-04-22 15:30:44

Answer 2

A:

^.+?-(.+?)-\d+$

SilentGhost 2010-04-22 15:13:16

I will asses if this works, and if so vote it up, as it is the correct answer! I was hoping to be able to choose the split points, so this may be helpful.

optician 2010-04-22 16:00:01

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Regular expression to extract text between two sets of characters (Javascript)

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