Regular Expression - Match all but first letter in each word in sentence
I've almost got the answer here, but I'm missing something and I hope someone here can help me out.
I need a regular expression that will match all but the first letter in each word in a sentence. Then I need to replace the matched letters with the correct number of asterisks. For example, if I have the following sentence:
There is an enormous apple tree in my backyard.
I need to get this result:
T**** i* a* e******* a**** t*** i* m* b*******.
I have managed to come up with an expression that almost does that:
(?<=(\b[A-Za-z]))([a-z]+)
Using the example sentence above, that expression gives me:
T* i* a* e* a* t* i* m* b*.
How do I get the right number of asterisks?
Thank you.
Answer
Try this:
\B[a-z]
\B is the opposite of \b - it matches where there is no word boundary - when we see a letter that is after another letter.
Your regex is replacing the whole tail of the word - [a-z]+, with a single asterisks. You should replace them one by one. If you want it to work, you should match a single letter, but check is has a word behind it (which is a little pointless, since you might as well check for a single letter (?<=[A-Za-z])[a-z]):
(?<=\b[A-Za-z]+)[a-z]
(note that the last regex has a variable length lookbehind, which isn't implemented in most regex flavors)