Regex not stopping at first space

Question

Trying to create a pattern that matches an opening bracket and gets everything between it and the next space it encounters. I thought \\[.*\\s would achieve th

Answer 1

Use this:

\[[^ ]*

This matches the opening bracket (\[) and then everything except space ([^ ]) zero or more times (*).

Answer 2

I suggest using \[\S*(?=\s).

• \[: Match a [ character.
• \S*: Match 0 or more non-space characters.
• (?=\s): Match a space character, but don't include it in the pattern. This feature is called a zero-width positive look-ahead assertion and makes sure you pattern only matches if it is followed by a space, so it won't match at the end of line.

You might get away with \[\S*\s if you don't care about groups and want to include the final space, but you would have to clarify exactly which patterns need matching and which should not.

Answer 3

You want to replace . with [^\s], this would match "not space" instead of "anything" that . implies

Answer 4

You could use a reluctant qualifier:

[.*?\s

Or instead match on all non-space characters:

[\S*\s

Answer 5

\[[^\s]*\s

The .* is a greedy, and will eat everything, including spaces, until the last whitespace character. If you replace it with \S* or [^\s]*, it will match only a chunk of zero or more characters other than whitespace.

Masking the opening bracket might be needed. If you negate the \s with ^\s, the expression should eat everything except spaces, and then a space, which means up to the first space.