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regex - multiple matches after a specific word

Simplified example: consider the string aabaabaabaabaacbaabaabaabaa

I want to match all aa occurrences only after the c in the middle, using one regex expression.

The closest I've come to is c.*\Kaa but it only matches the last aa, and only the first aa with the ungreedy flag.

I'm using the regex101 website for testing.

Solution

  • You can use

    (?:\G(?!^)|c).*?\Kaa

    See the regex demo. Details:

    • (?:\G(?!^)|c) - either the end of the previous successful match (\G(?!^)) or (|) a c char
    • .*? - any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as few as possible
    • \K - forget the text matched so far
    • aa - an aa string.