Regex: Match word between 2 spaces on either side

Question

This Regex is a bit niche and I'm really struggling to get it down. Here is an example of what I hope it would do:

 Testing space was before this part word space after this part this part shouldn't count.

I want to try and extract all of the text between either of the two groups of spaces, this is what I've tried so far:

 {2}.*?word.*? {2}

(Not there is a space before both of the {2}'s)

It should only extract "space was before this part word space after this part". Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Look at regex101.com/r/oOryYx/1, Testing is not part of the match. — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 0:06
If you add spaces before "Testing" it will count those in the Regex though. Sorry I should've clarified that above. — murky123
– murky123, Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 0:07
Then you need " {2}(?:(?! {2}).)*?word.*? {2}", see regex101.com/r/oOryYx/2 — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Mar 27, 2020 at 0:08

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-27 00:13:54Z

You may use

 {2}(?:(?! {2}).)*?word.*? {2}

Details

{2} - two spaces
(?:(?! {2}).)*? - any char other than line break chars, 0 or more times, but as few as possible, that does not start a two space character string
word - a word string
.*? - any 0+ chars other than line break chars, as few as possible
{2} - two spaces

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