Question

How can I get all content between pipes and return a space where it comes across two pipes next to each other?

An example string and desired output is:

|test1| test2|test3 || test 4 |

Result1: "test1"
Result2: "test2"
Result3: "test3"
Result4: " "
Result5: "test4"

The closest I’ve got so far is:

• /[^\|]+)/ which will get all data between pipes but does not detect ||.
• /\|([^\|]*)/ which will get all data between pipes and detect || but have an extra whitespace result at the end.

Answer 1

In Ruby I’d not bother with a regex:

str = '|test1| test2|test3 || test 4 |'
str.split('|')[1 .. -1].map{ |s| (s.strip.empty?) ? ' ': s.strip } #=> ["test1", "test2", "test3", " ", "test 4"]