Question

I want a single regex that when applied to : “firstsecondthird” will match “firstthird” (in single group, ie in C# Match.Value will be equal to “firstthird”).

Is that possible? we can ignore suffix or prefix , but middle?

Answer 1

match a string that starts with ‘first’, has zero or more other characters, then ends with ‘third’. Is that what you mean?

"^first(.*)third$"

Or, do you mean if you find a string ‘firstsecondthird’, ditch everything apart from ‘first’ and ‘third’?

replace("^(first)second(third)$", "$1$2")