How to match string surrounded by two colons? Javascript

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I have the following sting "

11:50:00

how can I match minutes which is 50?

What I have tried:

var minutes = str.match(/\:/d{2}\:/);//matches ":50:", how can I match only the number?
Edited:
I have already found out how to match minutes with this regex arg.match(/\d{2}(?=:\d+$)/);
The problem is, if a user types a space before it, this still will match, how can I prevent it?

Posted 31-Jul-16 23:47pm

AlexLearne

Updated 1-Aug-16 1:02am

v3

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Karthik_Mahalingam 1-Aug-16 6:01am

var minutes = str.split(':')[1];

AlexLearne 1-Aug-16 6:10am

Thank you for your answer, but regex is really preferable here since I would like to check if somebody typed 2 numbers and also string is not acceptable. I would need to perform some calculations on minutes later. But your solution really works)

2 solutions

Solution 2

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Posted 1-Aug-16 0:05am

Patrice T

v2

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OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-31T23:57:00

Solution 1

Try:

~~(?<=\d+:)\d{2}(?=:\d+)~~

[edit]
Stupid language Javascript - it's regular expressions don't support lookbehind... :sigh:

Try this:

\d{2}(?=:\d+$)

It's not as robust, but it'll work in JS...
[/edit]

Posted 31-Jul-16 23:57pm

OriginalGriff

Updated 1-Aug-16 0:17am

v2

Comments

AlexLearne 1-Aug-16 6:01am

I am sorry, it gives me a syntax error, should it be like this?
str.match(/(?<=\d+:)\d{2}(?=:\d+)/) ?

OriginalGriff 1-Aug-16 6:17am

Answer updated.

Patrice T 1-Aug-16 6:24am

~~Looks the correction is to remove the "<"~~
My mistake

OriginalGriff 1-Aug-16 6:59am

I forgot JS doesn't support regexes properly as well! :laugh:

AlexLearne 1-Aug-16 6:20am

You are a lifesaver, thanks!

AlexLearne 1-Aug-16 6:31am

There is one last question, how can I check nobody types a whitespace before the number? At the moment it accepts whitespaces

OriginalGriff 1-Aug-16 6:58am

Unfortunately, you can't - the "non-whitespace" character would be included in the match because JS doesn't support lookbehind, so you can't say "match prefix but exclude it" which is what the original Regex did. If you can't exclude prefixes, then they have to be part of the matched string and then you have to extract them as a separate operation. Nasty.
Unfortunately, we are stuck with JS and it's many, many deficiencies for the foreseeable future... :sigh:

AlexLearne 1-Aug-16 7:04am

Thank you a lot, I guess I will have to use some other method, thanks anyway)

OriginalGriff 1-Aug-16 7:07am

You're welcome!