Question

I have a text file that needs to be parsed correctly. The text file looks like this:

[header]
   [header 2]
   [ header3 ] 

I can grab these headers by doing so

var expression:RegExp = /[ [a-z0-9 ]+ ]/igxm;
var items:Array = text.match(expression);

But I would also like to remove the white space from before and after the brackets, so the headers can align against the left edge. Also, for [ header3 ], I would like to remove the white space inside the brackets, before “h” and after “3”. What would be the correct regex for something this? Thanks in advance.

tone

Answer 1

Something like:

var expression:RegExp = /\[[ ]*([a-z0-9 ]*[a-z0-9]+)[ ]*\]/igxm;
var header:String = text.replace(expression, "$1");

This assumes you only have one match per-line (you run the same regexp over each line). If you want to run through the whole string, you can run the same regex with String.match() and then use the snippet above to extract the group.