Regex Capture mutiple repeating pattern Pattern-CodePudding

I have a question on parsing multiple repeating group using regex. A user might enter some query, which i need to parse and construct the correct sql statement out of it. Someone might enter:

Artist:Rolling Stones
Artist:"Rolling Stones"
Artist:"Rolling Stones" AND Title:Satisfaction
Artist:"Rolling Stones" AND Title:Satisfaction AND FileType:mp3

This regex would parse the first 2 samples:

(([A-Za-z]. ?):("?. "?)\s(AND|and|Or|or)?)

But i could have 1,2 or n of the same group. Is there something, where i could say repeat that multiple times and use the same pattern to match also the Title in sample 3 and Title and FileType in sample 4.

I came up with this:

(([A-Za-z]. ?):("?. "?)\s(AND|and|Or|or)?)\s ?(([A-Za-z]. ?):("?. "?)(AND|and|Or|or)?)?

That would capture sample 3, but does not match on 1 and 2.

Any help is appreciated. thanks

CodePudding user response：

I don't know if regex is the best tool for the job, but I came up with

(\w ?\:\"?. ?\"?(?=(\sAND|\sOR|$)))

You can see it matches your tokens, Explanation: it uses positive lookahead to ensure every token has after AND OR or a line termination, so your 1st and 3rd match

In your fist group you will find your query and in the second group you will find the ANDs and ORs

Demo

Explanation: uses lookahead to find the words AND or OR to delimit the tokens, also considering end of line to match single tokens