Adding space between special chars to adjacent string

Question

I'm using Sublime regex to convert a text like:

test! one.two .three; four, five . six. .seven

To look like: test ! one . two . three ; four , five . six . . seven

When I tried using capture groups and replacing (\w)([^\w\s]+)|([^\w\s]+)(\w) With: $1 $2 (notice the space), the string got totally messed up, with some chars being deleted.

test ! one .two hree ; four , five . six . even

Oddly enough, when I skip the pipelining and run the commands separately (replacing (\w)([^\w\s]+) followed by a different replace for ([^\w\s]+)(\w)), the result is as expected.

How do I pipeline ("or") regex variations and keep the grouping?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You are using 4 capturing groups using the alternation.

Looking at the example data, another option might be to use 2 capturing groups:

(\w+)\h*([^\w\s]+(?:\h+[^\w\s]+)*)\h*

Explanation

• (\w+) Capture group 1, match 1+ word chars
• \h* Match 0+ horizontal whitespace chars
• ( Capture group 2
  • [^\w\s]+ Match any char except a word or whitespace char
  • (?:\h+[^\w\s]+)* Repeat the previous with 1+ horizontal whitespace chars prepended
• ) Close group 2
• \h* Match 0+ trailing horizontal whitespace chars.

Regex demo

In the replacement use $1 $2

Before (Using Sublime 3)

After

---

Or you could use lookarounds to find positions where you could add a space:

(?<=\w)(?=[^\w\s])|(?=\w)(?<=[^\w\s])

Regex demo