I am trying to fix a bit of regex I have for a chatops bot for lita. I have the following regex:
/^(?:how\s+do\s+I\s+you\s+get\s+far\s+is\s+it\s+from\s+)?(.+)\s+to\s+(.+)/i
This is supposed to capture the words before and after 'to', with optional words in front that can form questions like: How do I get from x to y, how far from x to y, how far is it from x to y.
expected output:
match 1 : "x"
match 2 : "y"
For the most part my optional words work as expected. But when I pull my response matches, I get the words leading up to the first capture group included.
So, how far is it from sfo to lax should return:
sfo and lax.
But instead returns:
how far is it from sfo and lax
Your glitch is that the first chunk of your regex doesn't make sense.
To choose from multiple options, use this syntax:
(a|b|c)
What I think you're trying to do is this:
/^(?:(?:how|do|I|you|get|far|is|it|from)\s+)*(.+)\s+to\s+(.+)/i
The regexp says to skip all the words in the multiple options, regardless of order.
If you want to preserve word order, you can use regexps such as this pseudocode:
… how (can|do|will) (I|you|we) (get|go|travel) from …