Question

I am trying to build a regular expression that does matches only string2 below.

string 1: (ABC12: CPBI, OTCBB:CPBI)

string 2: (ABC12: CPBI OTCF CPBI)

Following is my C# code

private static Regex rxSymbol = new Regex(@"(?<=:)[&/\w -]+\s*(?=\))", RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace ); 

rxSymbol.IsMatch(ticker) 

isMatch statement is returning true for string1. When I tried to get the exact match using rxSymbol.Match(ticker), this is matching ‘CPBI’.

I tested this Regex in RegexHero before using in my code. It works correctly in regex Hero.

Can someone help me figure out what is wrong with my regular expression.

Update:

I realized what the problem is:
I want the Regex to return true only if the text between the first : and the first ) matches this pattern: /[&/\w -]+\s*/

In my example string (ABC12: CPBI, OTCBB:CPAA) there are two : and the regex is matching the text between 2nd : and )

How to modify this regex to enforce my requirement.

Answer 1

This seems to do the trick

(?<=\(\w+:)(\s*\w+)+(?=\))

I specified the first part (ABC12: with \(\w+:. I also replaced the middle part with the more specific one (\s*\w+)+.

Note also that within square brackets [ ], the special characters lose their meaning. Each character is taken as is.