Count number of words in a string

Question

How can I match the number of words in a string to be > then 5 using regex?

Input1: stack over flow => the regex will not match anything

Input2: stack over flow stack over => the regex will match this string

I have tried counting the spaces with /\/s/ but that didn't really helped me, because I need to match only strings with no of words > 5

Also I don't want to use split by spaces.

Answer 1

I would rely on a whitespace/non-whitespace patterns and allow trailing/leading whitespace:

^\s*\S+(?:\s+\S+){4,}\s*$

See demo

Explanation:

• ^ - start of string
• \s* - optional any number of whitespace symbols
• \S+ - one or more non-whitespace symbols
• (?:\s+\S+){4,} - 4 or more sequences of one or more whitespace symbols followed with one or more non-whitespace symbols
• \s* - zero or more (optional) trailing whitespace symbols
• $ - end of string

Answer 2

^ *\w+(?: +\w+){4,}$

You can use this regex.See demo.

https://regex101.com/r/cZ0sD2/15

Answer 3

To check if there are at least 5 words in string:

(?:\w+\W+){4}\b

• (?:\w+\W+){4} 4 words separated by non word characters
• \b followed by a word boundary -> requires a 5th word

See demo at regex101