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javascriptregexmatchstring-length

javascript how match whole words but in certain length limit

for example i have this two strings:

string1:

"hi sir may name is Jone"

string2

 "hi may name is Jone"

i have this this regex: 

     var regex = XRegExp('hi(?:(?!hi|Jone).)*?Jone', 'gs');

will match both of them but i want to modify the regex to match only in limited length of the whole string

i want to match the string two "hi may name is Jone" as had less words length how to do it..

Solution

  • If you want to get the string with the least amount of words that also matches your regex, you could split and use a whitespace as a separator and check the length of the returned array.

    As an example with an array of strings, you could create var longestString = ""; which will at the end of the loop contain the shortest matched string.

    In the loop, first check if there is a match and if longestString is an empty string. If that is the case then set the variable so you have a match to compare against future possible matches.

    var strings = [
  "test",
  "hi sir may name is Jone",
  "hi may name is Jone",
  "hi Jone",
  "hi may name is Jone test",
  "hi i am Jone",
  "may name is Jone test",
  "hi may name is Jane test test 2"
];

var regex = /hi(?:(?!hi|Jone).)*?Jone/;
var longestString = "";

strings.forEach((str) => {
  var match = XRegExp.match(str, regex);
  if (match && longestString === "") {
    longestString = str;
    return;
  }
  if (match && str.split(" ").length < longestString.split(" ").length) {
    longestString = str;
  }
});
console.log(longestString);
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/xregexp/xregexp-all.js"></script>