I need to find a match within the delimited string if the following two words appear between the pipes: apple and red
Example string 1 (should give a match):
|big blueberries blue|awesome lemon yellow|apple nice delicious red|
Example string 2 (should not give match):
|big blueberries apple|awesome lemon yellow|nice delicious red|
RegEx tried:
^.*?apple.*?red.*?
Which (kind of) works, but not sure how to include the pipe logic i.e. search between pipes.
If the 2 words in that order have to be between 2 pipes:
^[^|\r\n]*\|.*?\bapple\b[^|\r\n]*\bred\b[^|\r\n]*\|.*
^ Start of string[^|\r\n]*\| Match any char except | or a newline and then match |.*? Match as least as possible\bapple\b Match the word apple[^|\r\n]* Match optional chars other than | or a newline\bred\b Match the word red[^|\r\n]*\| Match any char except | or a newline and then match |.* Match the rest of the lineIf the order does not matter, you could use a capture group for either apple or red, and match the same word again, asserting that is using a negative lookhead and a backreference that it is not already matched:
^[^|\r\n]*\|.*?\b(apple|red)\b[^|\r\n]*\b(?!\1)(?:apple|red)\b[^|\r\n]*\|.*
See another .NET regex demo