Posted by Chung Leong on 08/23/06 20:44

HaggMan wrote:
> I'm trying to get the regular expression which matches text between two
> underscores:
> _MATCHTHIS_
>
> The problem is, I don't want to match it if the only thing in between
> the underscores are spaces or other underscores:
> _ _ _
> (this should get no match)
>
> _hello world_
> (this should match "hello world" even though there's a space because
> there's also things besides a space and underscore)
>
> Right now, I've got this:
> /_([^_]+?)_/ which does well at excluding _
>
> I've also tried this:
> /_([^_\s]+?)_/ which does well if there are NO spaces between the _'s.
> ie:
> _hello_
> (correctly matches "hello")
> _hello world_
> (does not match "hello world" as I would like)
> _ _ _
> (correctly does not match this)
>
> I'm stumped. Any help?

Is _hello_world_ a match or not? The following pattern might be what
you need:

/\b_\B(.+?)\B_\b/

Boundary conditions are used here instead of conditions on what's
inside.

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