I have a series of words I try to capture.

I have the following problem:

• The string ends with a fixed set of words
• It is not clearly defined how many words the string consists of. However, it should capture all words that start with a upper case letter (German language). Therefore, the left anchor should be the first word starting with lower case.

Example (bold is what I try to capture):

• I like Apple Bananas And Cars.

• building houses Might Be Salty Hard said Jessica.

This is the RegEx I tried so far, it only works, if the "non-capture" string does not include any upper case words: /(?:[a-zäöü]*)([\p{L} ().&] [Cars|Hard])/gu

CodePudding user response：

You might start the match with an uppercase character allowing German uppercase chars as well, and then optionally repeat matching either words that start with an uppercase character, or a "special character.

Then end the match with an alternation matching either Hard or Cars.

(?<!\S)[A-ZÄÖÜß][a-zA-ZäöüßÄÖÜẞ]*(?:\s (?:[A-ZÄÖÜß][a-zA-ZäöüßÄÖÜẞ]*|[ ()&]))*\s (?:Hard|Cars)\b

Explanation

• (?<!\S) Assert a whitespace boundary to the left to prevent starting the match after a non whitespace char
• [A-ZÄÖÜß][a-zA-ZäöüßÄÖÜẞ]* Match a word that starts with an uppercase char
• (?: Non capture group to match as a whole part
  • \s Match 1 whitespace chars
  • (?: Non capture group
    • [A-ZÄÖÜß][a-zA-ZäöüßÄÖÜẞ]* Match a word that starts with uppercase
    • | Or
    • [ ()&] Match one of the "special" chars
  • ) Close the non capture group
• )* Close the non capture group and optionally repeat it
• \s Match 1 whitespace chars
• (?:Hard|Cars) Match one of the alternatives
• \b A word boundary to prevent a partial word match

See a regex demo.

CodePudding user response：

Use \p{Lu} for uppercase letters:

(?:[\p{Lu} ()&][\p{L} ()&]* ) (?:Cars|Hard)

See live demo (showing matching umlauted letters and ß).