Question

I am trying to extract some words from a string. The two cases look like this:

Case 1: "Group X - Ford Mondeo or similar"
Case 2: "Group X - Ford Mondeo"

I would like a single .NET regex that captures “Ford Mondeo” in both cases.
The best I have so far is:

^Group [A-Z] - (?<VehicleModel>.+)(?: or similar)$

which returns:
Case 1: “Ford Mondeo”
Case 2: “”
I have tried this:

^Group [A-Z] - (?<VehicleModel>.+)(?: or similar)?$

which returns:

Case 1: ""
Case 2: "Ford Mondeo"

I was trying to say zero or one occurrences of ” or similar”.
I may need an expression that says “if endswith “or similar” do this else this.
I’ve been using Expresso for a good while now and just cant put my finger on what I need.
Can you help?

Answer 1

Depending on whether or not you want to accept any whitespace characters:

/^Group\s[A-Z]\s-\s(?<VehicleModel>.+?)(?:\sor\ssimilar)?$/

Will capture the text with whitespace characters including tabs, and

/^Group [A-Z] - (?<VehicleModel>.+?)(?: or similar)?$/

Will capture only if the text uses spaces. Like others said the key is in the .+? which makes the capturing group non-greedy. Without it the first group will swallow the or similar.