Do it again, but not this

In the last lesson you learned about group references.
(Apples|Oranges) \1 matches “Apples Apples” and “Oranges Oranges”

But what if you use many groups where most of them you don’t need to reference?
That’s where non-capturing groups come in handy.

(?:) creates a non-capturing group.
(?:Apples|Oranges) \1 will not match “Apples Apples” or “Oranges Oranges”

It’s like the group doesn’t exist

Task

Match the first two sentences

/ /

I like Apples and just Apples
I love Bananas and just Bananas
I like Bananas and just Apples

Previous lesson Skip to next lesson

Regex Cheatsheet

Here you find every Regex character explained

Anchors

^ - Start of a string
$ - End of a string
\b - Word boundary
\B - Not word boundary

Quantifiers

? - Optional
+ - 1 or more times
* - 0 or more times
{n} - Exactly n times
{n,} - at least n times
{,m} - at most m times
{n,m} - Between n and m times

Character Classes

[abc] - Character Set
[^abc] - Not in character set
[a-z] - Range of characters
. - Any character except newline
\d - Digit
\D - Not a digit
\w - Word character
\W - Not a word character
\s - Whitespace
\S - Not whitespace

Groups

(abc) - Capturing group
(?:abc) - Non-capturing group
\1 - Group Reference

Lookarounds

(?=abc) - Positive lookahead
(?!abc) - Negative lookahead
(?<=abc) - Positive lookbehind
(?<!abc) - Negative lookbehind

Flags

g - Global
i - Case-insensitive
m - Multiline

Other Characters

\[Symbol] - Use a Regex Symbol as Text
| - Or