I'm using rubular.com to build my regex, and their documentation describes the following:
(...) Capture everything enclosed
(a|b) a or b
How can I use an OR expression without capturing what's in it? For example, say I want to capture either "ac" or "bc". I can't use the regex
(a|b)(c)
right? Since then I capture either "a" or "b" in one group and "c" in another, not the same. I know I can filter through the captured results, but that seems like more work...
Am I missing something obvious? I'm using this in Java, if that is pertinent.
Depending on the regular expression implementation you can use so called non-capturing groups with the syntax (?:…)
:
((?:a|b)c)
Here (?:a|b)
is a group but you cannot reference its match. So you can only reference the match of ((?:a|b)c)
that is either ac
or bc
.