I'm not an expert with Regular Expressions, and I'm having serious problems matching a particular pattern.
The pattern is:
A sequence of consecutive, arbitrary words marked with a prefix and a suffix. Inside the word there should be at least one character.
I mean, suppose that the prefix is "AB" and the suffix is "YZ". With this input:
AB----YZAB====YZABYZ//AB++YZ,,,AB====YZAB---YZ
The matched groups should be:
AB----YZAB====YZ , AB++YZ , AB====YZAB---YZ
The group ABYZ should not be matched, because it is "empty" (there is nothing between the prefix and the suffix.
I tried with
(AB(.*?)YZ)+
But the ABYZ is detected as part of the sequence, as the "*" may match nothing. If I force to use non-empty groups with
(AB(.+?)YZ)+
But still no lock, it detects groups
AB----YZAB_____YZABYZ//AB++YZ and AB====YZAB---YZ
I tried many other, more complex, regExps, with no luck.
Any help would be very appreciated!
You may use
(?:AB(?:(?!AB).)+?YZ)+
See the regex demo.
Details
(?:AB(?:(?!AB).)+?YZ)+ - one or more repetitions of
AB - an AB substring(?:(?!AB).)+? (or (?:(?!AB|YZ).)+) - any char but a line break char, 1 or more repetitions, as few as possible, that does not start an AB char sequence (a so-called tempered greedy token)YZ - a YZ substring.