RegExp Negative Lookbehind workaround for React Native?

DingleberrySmith 0
Viewed 38

I am trying to split sentences with some exceptions to ignore cases like Mr. And Mrs. Etc... And add them to an array.

This worked in vanilla JS for me

/(?<!\sMrs)(?<!\sMr)(?<!\sSr)(\.\s)|(!\s)|(\?\s)/gm

Unfortunately React Native doesn't support the negative lookbehind.

Is there another way I can achieve the same result?

react-native regex
2 Answers

I ended up doing this:

let str = "Hello Mr. Jackson. How are you doing today?"

let sentences = str
    .replace(
      /(!”\s|\?”\s|\.”|!\)]s|\.\)\s|\?\)|!"\s|\."\s|\.\s|!\s|\?\s|[.?!])\s*/g,
      "$1|"
    )
    .split("|")

let arr = []

for (let i = 0; i < sentences.length; i++) {
  if (sentences[i].includes("Mr.") | sentences[i].includes("Mrs.")) {
    arr.push(sentences[i] + " " + sentences[i+1])
    i++
  } else {
    arr.push(sentences[i])
  }
}

console.log(arr)

If anyone has a more efficient solution, let me know!

DingleberrySmith0

You can create exceptions in the following way:

let str = "Hello Mr. Jackson. How are you doing today?"
let sentences = str.match(/(?:\b(?:Mrs?|Sr)\.\s|[^!?.])+[!?.]?/g).map(x => x.trim())
console.log(sentences)

The regex (see its online demo) matches

  • (?:\b(?:Mrs?|Sr)\.\s|[^!?.])+ - one or more occurrences of
    • \b(?:Mrs?|Sr)\.\s - Mr, Mrs or Sr as whole words followed with . and a whitespace char
    • | - or
    • [^!?.] - any single char other than ?, ! and .
  • [!?.]? - an optional !, ? or ..
Wiktor Stribiżew0
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