Question

I spent lot time figuring out a simple regex to return a group (only 1st group).

So the string can be –
“No purchase required” or “Purchase of $50.00 worth groceries is required.”

I am trying to write a regex which can parse “No” or “50” based on the given string.

This is what I have written.

(?:(No) monthly maintenance|Purchase of \$([\d\.]+ worth groceries)

This works fine but I want my output as 1st group/group 1 only.

Answer 1

Why not just use /(?:No monthly maintenance|Purchase of $([0-9.]+) worth groceries)/.

The match will fail if it’s not in one of those formats, and Group 1 matches '' for the “No monthly maintenance” case, or the number for other case.

If you really need to capture the string No or the number, you might need to get a little more complicated and do something like:

/(?:Purchase of $)?([0-9.]+|No) (?:monthly maintenance|worth groceries)/