Regex: match all spaces except for those after an exact match of a single word or two words

[pvr928]

Hi

I am trying to match all white spaces in a sentence, except for those after either a match on a particular word, or that particular word followed by another particular word.

I'm trying to use either lookahead or lookbehind. I can match the space immediately preceding the particular word, but not all the other spaces in the sentence.

Examples of the two sentences are (spaces to be matched are noted by { }; spaces not to be matched are noted by [ ] ):

Hello{ }there{ }where{ }is{ }my{ }toy[ ]today{ }Daddy

Hello{ }there{ }where{ }is{ }my{ }toy[ ]soldier[ ]today{ }Daddy

I am using:

(?=\s).(\btoy\b|\btoy soldier\b)

but this lookahead pattern matches only the space preceding 'toy'.

The two words are 'toy' and 'soldier'. 'toy' will always be present; if 'toy soldier' is present, 'soldier' will always follow 'toy', and 'soldier' will never appear by itself.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers

pvr928

 

[Peter_SSs]

Since the vba implementation of regex does not have a "look behind", I would probably just have a space as my pattern & have the code otherwise eliminate the unwanted spaces from the text being tested.
So something like this

Sub TestMatchingSpaces()
  Dim RX As Object, Matches As Object
  Dim s As String
  
  s = "Hello there where is my toy today Daddy"
'  s = "Hello there where is my toy soldier today Daddy"
  
  Set RX = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
  RX.Global = True
  RX.Pattern = " "
  Set Matches = RX.Execute(Replace(Replace(s, "soldier ", "soldier-", 1, -1, 1), "toy ", "toy-", 1, -1, 1))
End Sub

 

[pvr928]

Hi @Peter_SSs

Thanks for your code. I think I've bitten off more Regex than I can chew, so I'll incorporate what's expressed in your solution, being a replacement of the relevant whitespaces in the string with another non-word character, and then search for the remaining whitespaces.

Cheers

pvr928

 

[Peter_SSs]

Hope that works for you.