Parse an array with regular expression

Question

I have JS file and I need to parse that array in it:

something: ['Prefix.All','Ignore.Me','Prefix.Another']

I need to get all elements from "something" array with defined prefix. Now I can get it, if array will contain only one element. My regexp:

String: something: ['Prefix.All']
Can get element with:
/something\s*:\s*\[['"](Prefix[a-zA-Z0-9.]+)['"]]/

But how to find many elements in array? And how to find more than one "something" array in file?

• bonCodigo: Is your something always going to start with Prefix.All I would suggest you to split it by comma...
• nkuhta: I need to find "Prefix.***[.***]" here. Not Prefix.All
• Tim Pietzcker: What regex engine are you using for this? Unless it's .NET, you can't do it with a single regex.
• gaussblurinc: uh, take string, find first [, find last ]. take substring in [ ], split it by ,. find all substrings, that have prefix Prefix. Why you think, that regexp can really helps you?
• nkuhta: In that case I will find: required:[..], anything:[..], another:[..] e.t.c

Answer 1

In PHP you need to do it in two steps (which is probably better anyway - cramming everything into a single regex isn't always the best idea).

First, match the array you're looking for. Note that this regex requires that there are no brackets between the delimiters [ and ], so nested arrays or strings that contain brackets will cause the regex to fail (as in "match the wrong text"):

if (preg_match('/\bsomething: \[([^[\]]*)\]/', $subject, $regs)) {
 $result = $regs[1];
}

This will find the first occurrence of a string like something: ['Prefix.All','Ignore.Me','Prefix.Another'] and put 'Prefix.All','Ignore.Me','Prefix.Another' into $result.

Then you can get all the matches from that:

preg_match_all('/\bPrefix[^\']*/', $result, $final, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$final = $final[0];

Answer 2

In regex you can group a token with (), and ask for it many times with *.

So: (something)*would give you every instance of the word 'something'.

Further: (__your__token__here__)* finds every instance of your token.

Paste some of your array here: http://gskinner.com/RegExr/ and use the regex builder to test your regex

Does that help?

• nkuhta: I tried simple example. Find create[\d] in that string: "create2 create3 create4". But ()* don't work. Here is my repexp: /(create[\d])*/ . It can't do that. Mistake?
• Jay Gattuso: See edit - I always use an online regex tester to test what I want to do until I get it right - without seeing your array its a bit hard to figure out what you are trying to achieve. For your example, you just need (create[\d])
• Tim Pietzcker: (something)* matches "", "something", "somethingsomething" etc., but it doesn't do at all what the OP wants.
• Tim Pietzcker: Not really. In his example, two of the "tokens" he's looking for are separated by a token he does not want to match, so * wouldn't work.