Regex to match certain pattern unless part of larger pattern

Question

I want to write a regex to find whenever there isn't a space after a period or comma, unless there are three periods in a row, in which case it's find to have another word character after.

E.g.

"Hello.how are you" -> Match

"Sounds good..." -> No Match

"...are you sure?" -> No Match

This is what I have so far (quotation marks after ., are fine too), but it finds a match for the third example, which I don't want.

/[.,][^\s"”.]/g

How can I specify that \.\.\.\w should not match, but any other \.\w should?

(Using js)

Are you replacing? What is the expected output for the Hello.how are you string? If you replace with space, use replace(/(\.{3}\w)|[.,](?![\s"”.])/g, function(x,y) { return y ? y : " "; }) — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Mar 26, 2021 at 0:07

Francis Gagnon · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-26 00:02:07Z

2

I think the following regex does what you need:

(?<!\.\.)[.,](?=[^\s.])

It matches any period that isn't preceeded by two periods and that isn't followed by a period or a whitespace.

answered Mar 26, 2021 at 0:02

Francis Gagnon

3,6751 gold badge18 silver badges26 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

www Over a year ago

Thank you! Why do I need the positive lookahead?

Francis Gagnon Over a year ago

I guess it depends on what you want to match. In this case I'm only matching the offending period or comma.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Regex to match certain pattern unless part of larger pattern

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Related