Illustrator Regular Expression - Negative Lookbehind??

[born2wrestle]

I am trying to use regex to find any digits except if they are preceded by "_" underscore symbol.  If they are preceded by underscore it should not match.  I have gotten this to work in RegEx testing but it looks as though negative lookbehind is not supported: 

var reg = /(?<![_\d+])\d+/g;

Is there a way to accomplish this without negative lookbehind?

The regex above should return the digits in NAME12 but not NAME_12

Thanks in advance.

[CarlosCanto · Accepted solution]

how about removing "_digits" first? would that work for you?

var str = "NAME14 but not NAME_12 and NAME23";

var re = /\d+/g;

var arr = str.replace(/_\d+/g, '').match(re);

for (var a=0; a<arr.length; a++) {
    alert(arr[a]);
}

[born2wrestle]

Thank you for your reply.  This would work, however, I am using the full string later on so removing that isn't ideal.  I am using this regex to make changes (color) to this selected range (any number in the string not directly following an underscore, in this case the underscore is treated as a space).  The color change should only happen on numbers that are not preceded by "_".  There will be other changes that are made to the full string later on as well.  So far I have not been able to get anything to work in ExtendScript.  The negative lookbehind is exactly what I need the regex to do but is unsupported for Adobe.

Below is how two different examples should be after this regex + color change:

NAME12 but not NAME_12

[Disposition_Dev]

Carlos' answer doesn't preclude using the full string later. It doesn't update the string or change it in any way. It's creating a new variable and storing an updated string in that variable. The original string is left untouched so that it could be referenced again later.

Can you give a more thorough example of what your string(s) will look like? Is it a long string with lots of stuff in it that might have several instances of numbers that need to be reformatted (like carlos' example above)? Or is it a bunch of short strings that will only have one instance that needs to be reformatted (like a bunch of text frames that say "NAME12" and "NAME26" and "NAME_45")? This kind of information is very helpful in terms of determining a plan of action. 

[Disposition_Dev]

Additionally, are you working with a string in your code? Or are you working with the contents of a textFrame in illustrator and then changing characterAttributes of specific textRanges?

[born2wrestle]

Thank you Carlos and others who provided solutions.  I was able to get this to work for my needs.  To answer some other questions, my target was textframe contents which are fed variable data from a spreadsheet.  Most common cases are a NAME with 1-3 DIGITS following.

[Disposition_Dev]

try this:

[^_]+[\d]{2}

that's any character that's not an underscore at least once, followed by 2 digits.

[born2wrestle]

Thank you for your reply.  Please see my response to Carlos above for hopefully a more detailed description.  This regex gives me the following with my example text:

NAME12  NAME_12

I am changing the color of this range then performing other changes to the full string.  This is what I am trying to acheive:

NAME12  NAME_12

Also note, there may be more than two digits.  Example:  NAME1234  NAME_1234

[Silly-V]

Use a non-capturing group:

  var str = "NAME_1234";

  var rx = /(?:[^_])+\d+/;

  alert(str.match(rx)); // "1234"

[Disposition_Dev]

that would be the incorrect output for this use case though. in your example str = "NAME_1234", the expected output of match() should be undefined. it should only return the digits when they're not preceeded by an underscore.

[Disposition_Dev]

this one seems to work great

var str = "PLAYER45449929402384"
var rx = /[^_\d]([\d]{1,})/;
var myMatch = str.match(rx);
if(myMatch && myMatch.length && myMatch.length > 1)
	alert(str.match(rx)[1]);
else
	alert("no match");

[rcraighead]

@Disposition_Dev, can you provide a sample script showing how this can be used in ExtendScript? I can make it work in Keyboard Maestro but not ExtendScript.

[Disposition_Dev]

the regular expression?

var myRegex = /[^_][\d]{1,}/;

var str = "Name12 NAME_12";

var arr = str.match(myRegex);

for(var x=0;x<arr.length;x++)

{

    alert(arr[x]);

}

Or let's say you just wanted to alert a true/false if a string matches that regex:

var myRegex = /[^_][\d]{1,}/;

var str = "NAME12";

var str2 = "NAME_12"

alert(myRegex.test(str); //true

alert(myRegex.test(str2); //false   woops, this doesn't work. it's gonna find that 2 at the end of the string and return true

let's try this instead:

var myRegex = /[^_\d][\d]{1,}/; //look for anything that's not an underscore or a digit, followed by at least one digit

var str2 = "NAME_12";

alert(myRegex.test(str2); //false