Insert strings at multiple (but limited) matches in another string

Question

I have this string in Javascript:

text = "2222 22:22: John: New York /n last year and: the next year /n 3333 33:33: Jack: Los Angeles!!!"

I want it to be the following:

newText = "(xSep)2222 22:22:(zSep) John:(zSep) New York /n last year and: the next year /n (xSep)3333 33:33:(zSep) Jack:(zSep) Los Angeles!!!"

I've tried many things and only this way could my rest of the code work. So a "(xSep)" should come before every four numbers and a "(zSep)" should come after only the first two ": "

Please help me with this. Thank you in advanced.

I'm confused - where exactly do you want (zsep) to appear? – ekrah Dec 01 '14 at 16:17 — ekrah, Dec 01 '14 at 16:17
after only the first two occurrences of a `": "` – Nano Dec 01 '14 at 16:21 — Nano, Dec 01 '14 at 16:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 01 '14 at 16:29

1

Based off your given output and requirement, you can use the following.

var res = str.replace(/(\d{4}(?:[^:]*:){2})([^:]*:)/g, '(xSep)$1(zSep)$2(zSep)');

Working Demo

answered Dec 01 '14 at 16:29

hwnd

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Thank you very much. It worked really the way I wanted it.. could you please explain the way you did it? – Nano Dec 01 '14 at 16:39

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 01 '14 at 16:15

0

Just use string.replace method with regex as needle.

answered Dec 01 '14 at 16:15

Sergey Yarotskiy

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I've tried this but I can't get it to replace the four digits with (xSep)theSameFourDigits – Nano Dec 01 '14 at 16:17

Insert strings at multiple (but limited) matches in another string

2 Answers2