Regex to match URL end-of-line or "/" character
/(.+)/(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})-(\d+)(/.*)?$
1st Capturing Group (.+)
.+
matches any character (except for line terminators)
+
Quantifier — Matches between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
2nd Capturing Group (\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})
\d{4}
matches a digit (equal to [0-9]
)
{4}
Quantifier — Matches exactly 4 times
-
matches the character -
literally (case sensitive)
\d{2}
matches a digit (equal to [0-9]
)
{2}
Quantifier — Matches exactly 2 times
-
matches the character -
literally (case sensitive)
\d{2}
matches a digit (equal to [0-9]
)
{2}
Quantifier — Matches exactly 2 times
-
matches the character -
literally (case sensitive)
3rd Capturing Group (\d+)
\d+
matches a digit (equal to [0-9]
)
+
Quantifier — Matches between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
4th Capturing Group (.*)?
?
Quantifier — Matches between zero and one times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
.*
matches any character (except for line terminators)
*
Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
$
asserts position at the end of the string
To match either / or end of content, use (/|\z)
This only applies if you are not using multi-line matching (i.e. you're matching a single URL, not a newline-delimited list of URLs).
To put that with an updated version of what you had:
/(\S+?)/(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})-(\d+)(/|\z)
Note that I've changed the start to be a non-greedy match for non-whitespace ( \S+?
) rather than matching anything and everything ( .*
)
You've got a couple regexes now which will do what you want, so that's adequately covered.
What hasn't been mentioned is why your attempt won't work: Inside a character class, $
(as well as ^
, .
, and /
) has no special meaning, so [/$]
matches either a literal /
or a literal $
rather than terminating the regex (/
) or matching end-of-line ($
).