Ways to extract a substring located between two specific strings while accounting for escaped characters

Question

Ways to extract a substring located between two specific strings while accounting for escaped characters

My current task involves extracting strings between two specified tags. Here is the code that accomplishes this:

if (text.toLowerCase().indexOf("[CUSTOMTAG]") >= 0) {
      _data = /\[CUSTOMTAG](.*?)\[\/CUSTOMTAG]/g.exec(text);
      if (_data[1] && _data[1].length > 0) {
        const data = _data[1];
      }
    }

However, I encountered an issue when the string between the tags contains special characters like:

[CUSTOMTAG]this is some
[/ru ugly content here[/CUSTOMTAG]

When this occurs, I receive an exception stating Cannot read property '1' of null due to parsing failure. Is there a way to bypass escaping characters within the string?

javascript regex

Answer 1

Answer №1

While it may not be the most elegant solution, this code does get the job done. It might require some tweaking to fit your specific needs, but here's an alternate approach:

var input = `[CUSTOMTAG]this is some [/ru ugly content here[/CUSTOMTAG] [CUSTOMTAG]test2[/CUSTOMTAG]`;
var startIndex = 0, endIndex = 0, results = [];
while ((endIndex = input.indexOf("[/CUSTOMTAG]", endIndex)) >= 0 && (startIndex = input.indexOf("[CUSTOMTAG]", startIndex)) >= 0) {
results.push(input.substring(startIndex + "[CUSTOMTAG]".length, endIndex));

endIndex += "[/CUSTOMTAG]".length;
startIndex += "[CUSTOMTAG]".length;
}
console.log(results);

Answer 2

While it may not be the most elegant solution, this code does get the job done. It might require some tweaking to fit your specific needs, but here's an alternate approach:

var input = `[CUSTOMTAG]this is some [/ru ugly content here[/CUSTOMTAG] [CUSTOMTAG]test2[/CUSTOMTAG]`;
var startIndex = 0, endIndex = 0, results = [];
while ((endIndex = input.indexOf("[/CUSTOMTAG]", endIndex)) >= 0 && (startIndex = input.indexOf("[CUSTOMTAG]", startIndex)) >= 0) {
results.push(input.substring(startIndex + "[CUSTOMTAG]".length, endIndex));

endIndex += "[/CUSTOMTAG]".length;
startIndex += "[CUSTOMTAG]".length;
}
console.log(results);

Ways to extract a substring located between two specific strings while accounting for escaped characters

Answer №1

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