MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - How to match a string occurring somewhere between quotation marks

KevinH · 01-22-2025, 08:37 AM

Why use look ahead and behinds given smart quotes make begin and end directional?

Have you tried something simpler like:

“[^”]*\s(were)[,;!?.\s][^“”]*”

So it looks for a starting quote, then any number of things that are not an ending quote followed by a space then the word in question followed by either a space or punctuation marks, then followed by any number of things that are not a beginning or ending quote, and then finally an ending quote.

Give a version of that a try.

We use this approach when using regex to find the next opening or closing tag by replacing the smart quotes with < and >

01-22-2025, 08:37 AM	#2
KevinH Sigil Developer Posts: 8,805 Karma: 6000000 Join Date: Nov 2009 Device: many	Why use look ahead and behinds given smart quotes make begin and end directional? Have you tried something simpler like: “[^”]\s(were)[,;!?.\s][^“”]” So it looks for a starting quote, then any number of things that are not an ending quote followed by a space then the word in question followed by either a space or punctuation marks, then followed by any number of things that are not a beginning or ending quote, and then finally an ending quote. Give a version of that a try. We use this approach when using regex to find the next opening or closing tag by replacing the smart quotes with < and > Last edited by KevinH; 01-22-2025 at 09:45 AM.