Question

I have this string for example :

one two three four START four five four five six END seven

I want to search for the word “four” in it to replace it with REPLACED, this will give

one two three four START REPLACED five REPLACED five six END seven

I know that START(.*)END will give the words between and the delimiter.
I tried START(?<four>)END, but it gives nothing.

I’m working in Vbscript.

Answer 1

(?<name> is for named groups.

What you need are look-ahead and look-behind assertions to match the START.* and .*END pre and post-conditions, without actually matching them.

Dim input = "one two three four START four five four five six END seven"
Dim output = Regex.Replace(input, "(?<=START.*)four(?=.*END)", "test")

yields: one two three four START test five test five six END seven