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How can the distance between non-printing text characters be matched and kept to less than 2 characters long using regex?
Dim LenSpace As Integer = 2
Dim sttTest As String = "[A A] [AA BB] [SS UU POPO SS] [GAB]" & vbTab & " [ZZZZ]"
Dim patt As String = "(?<=\S)\s{" & LenSpace & ",}(?=\S)"
Dim regMath As MatchCollection = Regex.Matches(sttTest, patt)
The expected result should contain matches like:
But I see the opposite of what I expected in the output. Expecting an array output of 5 text elements, but I see 4 empty space elements.
The results can be obtained with this code:
Dim regMath As MatchCollection = Regex.Matches(sttTest, "\[.*?\]")
' or:
Dim strings As String() = Regex.Split(sttTest, "\s{" & LenSpace & ",}")
Maybe the problem can be reformulated.
I made a mistake entering the input text. I didn't know that '],[' is related to regex keywords. Now, if the input text is this text, it will not respond. Thank you for your new answer.
Dim sttTest as String ="aA Aa aAA BBa
aSS UU POPO SSa aGABa " & vbTab & " aZZZZa "
What result is expected, taking into consideration the value of LenSpace?
Characters that are less than (LenSpace) apart are expected to combine text together. For example:
{aA Aa,aAA BBa,aSS UU POPO SSa,aGABa,aZZZZa} Because it is less than 2 distances.
Try this:
Dim regMatch As MatchCollection = Regex.Matches(sttTest, "\S.*?(?=\s{" & LenSpace & ",}|\s*$)")
Regex.Split can be used too.
hi Viorel . Thank you. Here's the answer from Microsoft's Copilot AI
Dim regMatch As MatchCollection = Regex.Matches(sttTest, "[^\s]+(?:\s{1," & LenSpace & "}[^\s]+)*")