Regexp to grab protocol from URL

Question

Let's say I have a variable called URL and it's assigned a value of http://www.google.com. I can also received the URL via ftp, hence it'll be ftp://ftp.google.com. How can I have it so I grab everything before the :? I'll have an if/else condition afterwards to test the logic.

Answer 1

You mean like this?

/^(.*?):/

Answer 2

/^[^:]+/  

If you want to prevent 'www.foobar.com' (which has no protocol specified) to match as protocol:

/^[^:]+(?=:\/\/)/