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I have this string:
City - This is some text. This is some more - and continues here.
I would like to split the string at the first ' - ' to find 'city' (just a sample word, it can be other words as well). Plus to find the rest of the text after ' - '.
I constructed this expression:
(^[\D\W\S]*)( - )([\D\W\S]*) But this finds the last occurrence of ' - ' instead of the first one.
How can I stop at the first occurrence ?
589
Basically (0+1)* mathes any sequence of ones and zeroes. So, in your example (0+1)*1(0+1)* should match any sequence that has 1. It would not match 000 , but it would match 010 , 1 , 111 etc. (0+1) means 0 OR 1. 1* means any number of ones.
$ means "Match the end of the string" (the position after the last character in the string). Both are called anchors and ensure that the entire string is matched instead of just a substring.
Take this regular expression: /^[^abc]/ . This will match any single character at the beginning of a string, except a, b, or *c. If you add a * after it – /^[^abc]*/ – the regular expression will continue to add each subsequent character to the result, until it meets either an a , or b , or c .
To match a character having special meaning in regex, you need to use a escape sequence prefix with a backslash ( \ ). E.g., \. matches "." ; regex \+ matches "+" ; and regex \( matches "(" . You also need to use regex \\ to match "\" (back-slash).
The simplest solution would be to explicitly forbid the dash to be part of the first group:
^([^-]*) - (.*) Explanation:
^ # Start of string ([^-]*) # Match any number of characters except dashes \ - \ # Match a dash (surrounded by spaces) (.*) # Match anything that follows However, this would fail if your string could contain a dash in the first group (just not surrounded by spaces). If that's the case, then you can make use of lazy quantifiers:
^(.*?) - (.*) Explanation:
^ # Start of string (.*?) # Match any number of characters, as few as possible \ - \ # Match a dash (surrounded by spaces) (.*) # Match anything that follows If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
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