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regexexpressionsequencecapture

Regex: Capture everything up until a character sequence & if that character sequence doesn't exist, capture entire text

Aim:
Capture everything up until a character sequence & if those character sequences don't exist, capture entire text.

Character sequences: | table & | stats

Ex 1: search foo bar | table _time Action Direction returns search foo bar

Ex 2: search foo bar hello hi ciao 1234 returns search foo bar hello hi ciao 1234

Ex 3:
search foo bar
bar foo
| table _time Action Direction
returns
search foo bar
bar foo


Current solution which doesn't satisfy Ex 2:

(?<var>(?s).+?(?=\Q| table\E|\Q| stats\E))


You can use https://regex101.com/ for testing.
Any help would be very appreciated! Thank you.
Solution

  • You can use

    (?s)^(?<var>.*?(?=\| (?:table|stats)|$))

    See the regex demo.

    Details:

    • (?s) - singleline/dotall modifier on
    • ^ - start of string
    • (?<var>.*?(?=\| (?:table|stats)|$)) - Group "var":
      • .*? - zero or more chars, as few as possible, up to the leftmost occurrence of
      • (?=\| (?:table|stats)|$) - either |+space+table or stats, or end of string.