Regex lookahead, lookbehind and atomic groups

Lookarounds are zero width assertions. They check for a regex (towards right or left of the current position - based on ahead or behind), succeeds or fails when a match is found (based on if it is positive or negative) and discards the matched portion. They don't consume any character - the matching for regex following them (if any), will start at the same cursor position.

Read regular-expression.info for more details.

  • Positive lookahead:

Syntax:

(?=REGEX_1)REGEX_2

Match only if REGEX_1 matches; after matching REGEX_1, the match is discarded and searching for REGEX_2 starts at the same position.

example:

(?=[a-z0-9]{4}$)[a-z]{1,2}[0-9]{2,3}

REGEX_1 is [a-z0-9]{4}$ which matches four alphanumeric chars followed by end of line.
REGEX_2 is [a-z]{1,2}[0-9]{2,3} which matches one or two letters followed by two or three digits.

REGEX_1 makes sure that the length of string is indeed 4, but doesn't consume any characters so that search for REGEX_2 starts at the same location. Now REGEX_2 makes sure that the string matches some other rules. Without look-ahead it would match strings of length three or five.

  • Negative lookahead

Syntax:

(?!REGEX_1)REGEX_2

Match only if REGEX_1 does not match; after checking REGEX_1, the search for REGEX_2 starts at the same position.

example:

(?!.*\bFWORD\b)\w{10,30}$

The look-ahead part checks for the FWORD in the string and fails if it finds it. If it doesn't find FWORD, the look-ahead succeeds and the following part verifies that the string's length is between 10 and 30 and that it contains only word characters a-zA-Z0-9_

Look-behind is similar to look-ahead: it just looks behind the current cursor position. Some regex flavors like javascript doesn't support look-behind assertions. And most flavors that support it (PHP, Python etc) require that look-behind portion to have a fixed length.

  • Atomic groups basically discards/forgets the subsequent tokens in the group once a token matches. Check this page for examples of atomic groups

Examples

Given the string foobarbarfoo:

bar(?=bar)     finds the 1st bar ("bar" which has "bar" after it)
bar(?!bar)     finds the 2nd bar ("bar" which does not have "bar" after it)
(?<=foo)bar    finds the 1st bar ("bar" which has "foo" before it)
(?<!foo)bar    finds the 2nd bar ("bar" which does not have "foo" before it)

You can also combine them:

(?<=foo)bar(?=bar)    finds the 1st bar ("bar" with "foo" before it and "bar" after it)

Definitions

Look ahead positive (?=)

Find expression A where expression B follows:

A(?=B)

Look ahead negative (?!)

Find expression A where expression B does not follow:

A(?!B)

Look behind positive (?<=)

Find expression A where expression B precedes:

(?<=B)A

Look behind negative (?<!)

Find expression A where expression B does not precede:

(?<!B)A

Atomic groups (?>)

An atomic group exits a group and throws away alternative patterns after the first matched pattern inside the group (backtracking is disabled).

  • (?>foo|foot)s applied to foots will match its 1st alternative foo, then fail as s does not immediately follow, and stop as backtracking is disabled

A non-atomic group will allow backtracking; if subsequent matching ahead fails, it will backtrack and use alternative patterns until a match for the entire expression is found or all possibilities are exhausted.

  • (foo|foot)s applied to foots will:

    1. match its 1st alternative foo, then fail as s does not immediately follow in foots, and backtrack to its 2nd alternative;
    2. match its 2nd alternative foot, then succeed as s immediately follows in foots, and stop.

Some resources

  • http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html
  • http://www.rexegg.com/regex-lookarounds.html

Online testers

  • https://regex101.com

Tags:

Regex

Lookaround

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