"Fingerprint (rear-mounted, region dependent), accelerometer, proximity, compass"

Above is the string of sensors in a device. I'm trying to match every sensor. The problem is that when I match above using /. ?,/g, The matches are:

1. Fingerprint (rear-mounted,
2. region dependent),
3. accelerometer,
4. proximity

I'm getting 4 sensors here instead of three. Because, of course, my pattern matches these. What I want to do is that when a , is preceded by (, then I want to match ), and when not preceded by (, I want to match ,

I think I need to use lookarounds here. But I can't get them to work for me. I tried multiple regexes. It's silly to paste them all here :)

I'm using JavaScript

CodePudding user response：

Here is one way to do so:

(?:[^(,] (?:\([^)]*\))?) ?(?:, |$)

See the online demo here.

const pattern = /(?:[^(,] (?:\([^)]*\))?) ?(?:, |$)/g;
const str = 'Fingerprint (rear-mounted, region dependent), accelerometer, proximity, compass';

const matches = str.matchAll(pattern)
for (const match of matches) {
  console.log(match[0]);
}

• (?:) ?: Non capturing group, repeated between one and unlimited times, as few as possible.
  • [^(,]: Matches any character other than ( or ,.
  • (?:)?: Optional non capturing group.
    • \(: Matches (.
    • [^)]*: Matches any character other than ), between zero and unlimited times, as much as possible.
    • \): Matches ).
• (?:): Non capturing group.
  • , : Matches , .
  • |: Or.
  • $: Matches the end of the string.