Question

Can you extract these “key: value” pairs with ONE regex only?

"a: xyz   b:  pqr st  c: lm no p"

The result I would like:

"a" => "xyz"
"b" => "pqr st"
"c" => "lm no p"

---

My Attempt (With Two Regex)

var s = 'a: xyz   b:  pqr st  c: lm no p';
var r = /(?:.(?!(?:a|b|c):))+/g;
var m;

while ((m = r.exec(s))) {

    var s2 = m[0];
    var r2 = /(a|b|c):\s*(.+)/;
    var m2 = r2.exec(s2);

    console.log('"' + m2[1] + '" => "' + m2[2] + '"');
}

The result I get:

"a" => "xyz  "
"b" => "pqr st "
"c" => "lm no p"

So, can this be done with ONE regex only?

Answer 1

Use regex pattern /(\w+):\s*([^:]+)(?=\s|$)/g

See this demo.

To trim whitespace characters use around use regex pattern

/(\w+):\s*([^:]*\S)\s*(?=\w+:|$)/g

See this demo.

 /\b(\w+):\s*([^:]*\S)\b\s*(?=\w+:|$)/g

See this demo.