Let's say I have the string:

"Hello world; some random text; foo; bla bla; "

what regular expresion could I use in order to get a substring until the second ; .

In other words I will like to end up with the substring "Hello world; some random text;"

or maybe I want to get the substring until the 3th ; thus ending up with:

"Hello world; some random text; foo;"

Let's say I have the string:

"Hello world; some random text; foo; bla bla; "

what regular expresion could I use in order to get a substring until the second ; .

In other words I will like to end up with the substring "Hello world; some random text;"

or maybe I want to get the substring until the 3th ; thus ending up with:

"Hello world; some random text; foo;"

• javascript
• regex

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jan 11, 2012 at 5:17 xkeshav 54.1k4747 gold badges181181 silver badges251251 bronze badges asked Jan 11, 2012 at 5:15 Tono NamTono Nam 36.2k8484 gold badges326326 silver badges492492 bronze badges

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4 Answers 4

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

Try this one. Should work just fine.

/([\w\s]+?\;){2}/

Used as follows:

var str = "Hello world; some random text; foo; bla bla; ";
var match = str.match(/([^;]*;){2}/)[0];
alert(match); // Hello world; some random text;

If you don't have to use Regex, you could use the Split() method with a semicolon separator:

http://www.w3schools./jsref/jsref_split.asp

I don't think this is a problem that is best solved with RegExps. Very easy to do it with straight JS. http://jsfiddle/mendesjuan/xvM53/1/

var str = "Hello world; some random text; foo; bla bla; ";
function getParts(str, delimiter, partCount) {
  return str.split(delimiter,partCount).join(";");
}

Credit where it's due: I shamelessly used diEcho's idea, I didn't remember you could pass a second parameter to split.

why regex??

do it in simple way

var str = "Hello world; some random text; foo; bla bla; "
alert(str.split(";",2).join(";"));

reference