SID-02522: Regex search: lookaheads

Status:	Asked	TWiki version:	6.1.0	Perl version:	5.038002 (linux)
Category:	CategoryApplications	Server OS:	Linux 6.1.0	Last update:	2 months ago

I am trying to read the content of a single-column table with regex search ( type="regex" multiple="on" ). The column looks like this:

|*Name*|

|Work|

|Private|

|Organisation|

|Partner|

|Other|

Search pattern .*\|.*?\|.* works fine, as does \|.*?\|, but the results include the "|" starting and ending the table column. Therefore I tried to use regex lookups, but I can't get it working. I tried:

.*?(?<=\|).*?(?=\|).*

.*?(?<=(\|)).*?(?=(\|)).*

(?<=(\|)).*?(?=(\|))

and many others, but all without any result. Can someone explain how to use lookups in regex SEARCH?

Additionally, I want to exclude the column header with the *Name*.

Search pattern (?<=^\|)[^\*].*?(?=\|) works fine in regex101.com, but not in TWiki, nor does pattern (?<=^\|)[!\*].*?(?=\|) (with an exclamation mark for the negotiation).

What am I doing wrong?

-- Emiel Van Riel - 2025-10-27

Discussion and Answer

I am not clear on what you want to achieve. Could you provide an example of input, and expected search output?

-- Peter Thoeny - 2025-11-24

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.