Question

I have a simple string:

data1:abc,123,xyz,data2:hello,goodbye

I need regex to return a match collection of:

abc
123
xyz

In the past I’d do it with a regular expression:

data1:(.*)data2:

and then split the output of that on the comma.

Is there a way to do this as one regular expression and no external code?

Answer 1

Try this

String text = "data1:abc,123,xyz,data2:hello,goodbye";
Regex reg = new Regex(@"(?<=data1:.*)[^,]+(?=.*data2)");

MatchCollection result = reg.Matches(text);

foreach (var item in result) {
    Console.WriteLine(item.ToString());
}

output:

abc
123
xyz