Question

Context

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Using Ruby I am parsing strings looking like this:

A type with an ID…

[Image=4b5da003ee133e8368000002]
[Video=679hfpam9v56dh800khfdd32]

…with between 0 and n additional options separated with @…

[Image=4b5da003ee133e8368000002@size:small]
[Image=4b5da003ee133e8368000002@size:small@media:true]

In this example:

[Image=4b5da003ee133e8368000002@size:small@media:true]

I want to retrieve:

1. [Image=4b5da003ee133e8368000002@size:small@media:true]
2. Image
3. 4b5da003ee133e8368000002
4. size:small
5. media:true

Problem

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Right now using this regex:

(\[([a-zA-Z]+)=([a-zA-Z0-9]+)(@[a-zA-Z]+:[a-zA-Z]+)*\])

I get…

1. [Image=4b5da003ee133e8368000002@size:small@media:true]
2. Image
3. 4b5da003ee133e8368000002
4. @media:true

What am I doing wrong? How can I get what I want?

PS: All the results are copied from http://rubular.com/ which is nice to debug regex. Please use it if it can help you help me 🙂

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Edit : if it’s impossible to get all options separated, how could I get this:

1. [Image=4b5da003ee133e8368000002@size:small@media:true]
2. Image
3. 4b5da003ee133e8368000002
4. @size:small@media:true

Answer 1

Edit:

Ruby’s Regex implementation seems not to support multiple captures on one group, as most other regex engines do. Therefore, you’ll have to do two steps; first getting all the @*:* in one string and then split those.

To get all of them, this should work:

(\[([a-zA-Z]+)=([a-zA-Z0-9]+)((?:@[a-zA-Z]+:[a-zA-Z]+)*)\])