Find a word before one of two possible separators

Question

word:12335
anotherword:2323434
totallydifferentword/455
word/32

I need to grab the character string before the : or / usi

Answer 1

Something like this would do the trick in Ruby http://rubular.com/r/PzVQVIpKPq

^(\w+)(?:[:\/])

Starting from the front of the string, grab any word characters and capture them, until you reach the non-capturing / or :