How to match, but not capture, part of a regex?

Question

I have a list of strings. Some of them are of the form 123-...456. The variable portion \"...\" may be:

• the string \"apple\" followed by a hyphen,

Answer 1

I have modified one of the answers (by @op1ekun):

123-(apple(?=-)|banana(?=-)|(?!-))-?456

The reason is that the answer from @op1ekun also matches "123-apple456", without the hyphen after apple.

Answer 2

The only way not to capture something is using look-around assertions:

(?<=123-)((apple|banana)(?=-456)|(?=456))

Because even with non-capturing groups (?:…) the whole regular expression captures their matched contents. But this regular expression matches only apple or banana if it’s preceded by 123- and followed by -456, or it matches the empty string if it’s preceded by 123- and followed by 456.

|Lookaround  |    Name      |        What it Does                       |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
|(?=foo)     |   Lookahead  | Asserts that what immediately FOLLOWS the |
|            |              |  current position in the string is foo    |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
|(?<=foo)    |   Lookbehind | Asserts that what immediately PRECEDES the|
|            |              |  current position in the string is foo    |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
|(?!foo)     |   Negative   | Asserts that what immediately FOLLOWS the |
|            |   Lookahead  |  current position in the string is NOT foo|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
|(?<!foo)    |   Negative   | Asserts that what immediately PRECEDES the|
|            |   Lookbehind |  current position in the string is NOT foo|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Answer 3

A variation of the expression by @Gumbo that makes use of \K for resetting match positions to prevent the inclusion of number blocks in the match. Usable in PCRE regex flavours.

123-\K(?:(?:apple|banana)(?=-456)|456\K)

Matches:

Match 1  apple
Match 2  banana
Match 3

Answer 4

By far the simplest (works for python) is '123-(apple|banana)-?456'.

Answer 5

Try this:

/\d{3}-(?:(apple|banana)-)?\d{3}/

Answer 6

Try:

123-(?:(apple|banana|)-|)456

That will match apple, banana, or a blank string, and following it there will be a 0 or 1 hyphens. I was wrong about not having a need for a capturing group. Silly me.