Develop Reference

Regex in Google Apps Script practical issue. Forms doesn't read regex as it should

I hope its just something i'm not doing right.
I've been using a simple script to create a form out of a spreadsheet. The script seems to be working fine. The output form is going to get some inputs from third parties so i can analyze them in my consulting activity.
Creating the form was not a big deal, the structure is good to go. However, after having the form creator script working, i've started working on its validations, and that's where i'm stuck at.
For text validations, i will need to use specific Regexes. Many of the inputs my clients need to give me are going to be places' and/or people's names, therefore, i should only allow them usign A-Z, single spaces, apostrophes and dashes.
My resulting regexes are:
//Regex allowing a **single name** with the first letter capitalized and the occasional use of "apostrophes" or "dashes".
const reg1stName = /^[A-Z]([a-z\'\-])+/
//Should allow (a single name/surname) like Paul, D'urso, Mac'arthur, Saint-Germaine ecc.
//Regex allowing **composite names and places names** with the first letter capitalized and the occasional use of "apostrophes" or "dashes". It must avoid double spaces, however.
const regNamesPlaces = /^[^\s]([A-Z]|[a-z]|\b[\'\- ])+[^\s]$/
//This should allow (names/surnames/places' names) like Giulius Ceasar, Joanne D'arc, Cosimo de'Medici, Cosimo de Medici, Jean-jacques Rousseau, Firenze, Friuli Venezia-giulia, L'aquila ecc.
Further in the script, these Regexes are called as validation pattern for the forms text items, in accordance with each each case.
//Validation for single names
var val1stName = FormApp.createTextValidation()
.setHelpText("Only the person First Name Here! Use only (A-Z), a single apostrophe (') or a single dash (-).")
.requireTextMatchesPattern(reg1stName)
.build();
//Validation for composite names and places names
var valNamesPlaces = FormApp.createTextValidation()
.setHelpText(("Careful with double spaces, ok? Use only (A-Z), a single apostrophe (') or a single dash (-)."))
.requireTextMatchesPattern(regNamesPlaces)
.build();
Further yet, i have a "for" loop that creates the form based on the spreadsheets fields. Up to this point, things are working just fine.
for(var i=0;i<numberRows;i++){
var questionType = data[i][0];
if (questionType==''){
continue;
}
else if(questionType=='TEXTNamesPlaces'){
form.addTextItem()
.setTitle(data[i][1])
.setHelpText(data[i][2])
.setValidation(valNamesPlaces)
.setRequired(false);
}
else if(questionType=='TEXT1stName'){
form.addTextItem()
.setTitle(data[i][1])
.setHelpText(data[i][2])
.setValidation(val1stName)
.setRequired(false);
}
The problem is when i run the script and test the resulting form.
Both validations types get imported just fine (as can be seen in the form's edit mode), but when testing it in preview mode i get an error, as if the Regex wasn't matching (sry the error message is in portuguese, i forgot to translate them as i did with the code up there):
A screenshot of the form in edit mode
A screeshot of the form in preview mode
However, if i manually remove the bars out of this regex "//" it starts working!
A screenshot of the form in edit mode, Regex without bars
A screenshot of the form in preview mode, Regex without bars
What am i doing wrong? I'm no professional dev but in my understanding, it makes no sense to write a Regex without bars.
If this is some Gforms pattern of reading regexes, i still need all of this to be read by the Apps script that creates this form after all. If i even try to pass the regex without the bars there, the script will not be able to read it.
const reg1stName = ^[A-Z]([a-z\'])+
const regNamesPlaces = ^[^\s]([A-Z]|[a-z]|\b[\'\- ])+[^\s]$
//Can't even be saved. Returns: SyntaxError: Unexpected token '^' (line 29, file "Code.gs")
Passing manually all the validations is not an option. Can anybody help me?
Thanks so much

This
/^[A-Z]([a-z\'\-])+/
will not work because the parser is trying to match your / as a string literal.
This
^[A-Z]([a-z\'\-])+
also will not work, because if the name is hyphenated, you will only match up to the hyphen. This will match the 'Some-' in 'Some-Name', for example. Also, perhaps you want a name like 'Saint John' to pass also?
I recommend the following :)
^[A-Z][a-z]*[-\.' ]?[A-Z]?[a-z]*
^ anchors to the start of the string
[A-Z] matches exactly 1 capital letter
[a-z]* matches zero or more lowercase letters (this enables you to match a name like D'Urso)
[-\.' ]? matches zero or 1 instances of - (hyphen), . (period), ' (apostrophe) or a single space (the . (period) needs to be escaped with a backslash because . is special to regex)
[A-Z]? matches zero or 1 capital letter (in case there's a second capital in the name, like D'Urso, St John, Saint-Germaine)

Regex get all quoted words that are not also single quoted

Would it be possible to get all quoted text with a single regex?
Example text from regexr:
Edit the "Expression" & Text to see matches. Roll over "matches" or the expression for details.
Undo mistakes with ctrl-z.
Save 'Favorites & "Share" expressions' with friends or the Community. "Explore" your results with Tools. A full Reference & Help is available in the Library, or watch the video Tutorial.
In this case I would like to capture Expression, matches and Explore but not Share since 'Favorites & "Share" expressions' is single quoted.

You can't build a regex that matches only the parts you want in Javascript, however you can build a pattern that matches all the string without gaps and use a capture group to extract the part you want:
/[^"']*(?:'[^']*'[^"']*)*"([^"]*)"/g
#^----------------------^ all that isn't content between double quotes
Since your string may end with something like abcd 'efgh "ijkl" mnop' qrst (in short without the part you want but with a double quote part inside single quote substring), It's more secure to change the pattern to:
/[^"']*(?:'[^']*(?:'[^"']*|$))*(?:"([^"]*)"|$)/g
and to discard the last match.

Without special regex pattern:
var mystr = "Edit the \"Expression\" & Text to see matches. Roll over \"matches\" or the expression for details. Undo mistakes with ctrl-z. Save 'Favorites & \"Share\" expressions' with friends or the Community. \"Explore\" your results with Tools. A full Reference & Help is available in the Library, or watch the video Tutorial."
var myarr = mystr.split(/\"/g)
var opening=false;
for(var i=1; i<myarr.length;i=i+2){
if((myarr[i-1].length-myarr[i-1].replace(/'/g,"").length)%2===1){opening=!opening;}
if(!opening){console.log(myarr[1]);}
}
How works:
split text by "
odd index is string with " wrapper
if before this index, odd numbers of ' exists, this item wrapped by ' and should not be considered

Match attribute value of XML string in JS

I've researched stackoverflow and find similar results but it is not really what I wanted.
Given an xml string: "<a b=\"c\"></a>" in javascript context, I want to create a regex that will capture the attribute value including the quotation marks.
NOTE: this is similar if you're using single quotation marks.
Currently I have a regular expression tailored to the XML specification:
[_A-Za-z][\w\.\-]*(?:=\"[^\"]*\")?
[_A-Za-z][\w\.\-]* //This will match the attribute name.
(?:=\"[^\"]*\")? //This will match the attribute value.
\"[^\"]*\" //This part concerns me.
My question now is, what if the xml string looks like this:
<shout statement="Hi! \"Richeve\"."></shout>
I know this is a dumb question to ask but I just want to capture rare cases that this scenario might happen (I know the coder can use single quotes on this scenario) but there are cases that we don't know the current value of the attribute given that the attribute value changes dynamically at runtime.
So to make this clearer, the result of that using the correct regex should be:
"Hi! \"Richeve\"."
I hope my question is clear. Thanks for all the help!
PS: Note that the language context is Javascript and I know it is tempting to use lookbehinds but currently lookbehinds are not supported.
PS: I know it is really hard to parse XML but I have an elegant solution to this :) so I just need this small problem to be solved. So this problem only main focus is capturing quotation marked string tokens containing quotation marks inside the string token.

The standard pattern for content with matching delimiters and embedded escaped delimiters goes like this:
"[^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*"
Ignoring the obvious first and last characters in the pattern, here's how the rest of the pattern works:
[^"\\]*: Consume all characters until a delimiter OR backslash (matching Hi! in your example)
(?:\\.[^"\\]*)* Try to consume a single escaped character \\. followed by a series of non delimiter/backslash characters, repeatedly (matching \"Richeve first and then \". next in your example)
That's it.
You can try to use a more generic delimiter approach using (['"]) and back references, or you can just allow for an alternate pattern with single quotes like so:
("[^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*"|'[^'\\]*(?:\\.[^'\\]*)*')
Here's another description of this technique that might also help (see the section called Strings): http://www.regular-expressions.info/examplesprogrammer.html

Description
I'm pretty really sure embedding double quotes inside a double quoted attribute value is not legal. You could use the unicode equivalent of a double quote \x22 inside the value.
However to answer the question, this expression will:
allow escaped quotes inside attribute values
capture the attribute statement 's value
allow attributes to appear in any order inside the tag
will avoid many of the edge cases which will trip up pattern matching inside html text
doesn't use lookbehinds
<shout\b(?=\s)(?=(?:[^>=]|='(?:[^']|\\')*'|="(?:[^"]|\\")*"|=[^'"][^\s>]*)*?\sstatement=(['"])((?:\\['"]|.)*?)\1(?:\s|\/>|>))(?:[^>=]|='(?:[^']|\\')*'|="(?:[^"]|\\")*"|=[^'"][^\s>]*)*>.*?<\/shout>
Example
Pretty Rubular
Ugly RegexPlanet set to Javascript
Sample Text
Note the difficult edge case in the first attribute :)
<shout onmouseover=' statement="He said \"I am Inside the onMouseOver\" " ; if ( 6 > a ) { funRotate(statement) } ; ' statement="Hi! \"Richeve\"." title="sometitle">SomeString</shout>
Matches
Group 0 gets the entire tag from open to close
Group 1 gets the quote surrounding the statement attribute value, this is used to match the closing quote correctly
Group 2 gets the statement attribute value which may include escaped quotes like \" but not including the surrounding quotes
[0][0] = <shout onmouseover=' statement="He said \"I am Inside the onMouseOver\" " ; if ( 6 > a ) { funRotate(statement) } ; ' statement="Hi! \"Richeve\"." title="sometitle">SomeString</shout>
[0][1] = "
[0][2] = Hi! \"Richeve\".

find regex for validating terms (keyword) input

unfortunately i'm poor in regex! can you guide me to write a regex in javascript which can determine my terms input box. a user should input terms with this format:
#(all alphanumeric chars + blank + dash + quotation )
for example:
#keyword1#key word2#keyword3#key-word4#key'word5
and these inputs should be illegal:
#####
##keyword1#key2#
# #keyword
#!%^&

As you wrote a term is specified by:
/#[a-zA-Z0-9 '-]+/
Repeat that pattern, and force it to contain the start and end of the string with ^ and $.
/^(#[a-zA-Z0-9 '-]+)+$/

/#[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9 '-]+/
When you said "# #keyword" should be invalid, I've assumed you mean "# " should be invalid and "#keyword" should be extracted from that string. The first 'box' means a keyword will always begin with a lowercase letter, uppercase letter, or number. If thats too restrictive and you want to allow for example "#-keyword", just add dash in before the first close-square-bracket, like so:
/#[a-zA-Z0-9-][a-zA-Z0-9 '-]+/
And to return an array of results in javascript, apply it to the string using the "global" modifier ('g' after the second slash):
arrayOfKeywords = keywordString.match(/#[a-zA-Z0-9-][a-zA-Z0-9 '-]+/g);
You may wish to see this code at my test page. Regular-expressions.info is a useful site to learn more about regular expressions. They also have an interactive page to test regexes on, which can be useful when playing around.

Breaking a String into Chunks based on Pattern

I have one string, that looks like this:
a[abcdefghi,2,3,jklmnopqr]
The beginning "a" is fixed and non-changing, however the content within the brackets is and can follow a pattern. It will always be an alphabetical string, possibly followed by numbers separate by commas or more strings and/or numbers.
I'd like to be able to break it into chunks of the string and any numbers that follow it until the "]" or another string is met.
Probably best explained through examples and expected ideal results:
a[abcdefghi] -> "abcdefghi"
a[abcdefghi,2] -> "abcdefghi,2"
a[abcdefghi,2,3,jklmnopqr] -> "abcdefghi,2,3" and "jklmnopqr"
a[abcdefghi,2,3,jklmnopqr,stuvwxyz] -> "abcdefghi,2,3" and "jklmnopqr" and "stuvwxyz"
a[abcdefghi,2,3,jklmnopqr,1,9,stuvwxyz] -> "abcdefghi,2,3" and "jklmnopqr,1,9" and "stuvwxyz"
a[abcdefghi,1,jklmnopqr,2,stuvwxyz,3,4] -> "abcdefghi,1" and "jklmnopqr,2" and "stuvwxyz,3,4"
Ideally a malformed string would be partially caught (but this is a nice extra):
a[2,3,jklmnopqr,1,9,stuvwxyz] -> "jklmnopqr,1,9" and "stuvwxyz"
I'm using Javascript and I realize a regex won't bring me all the way to the solution I'd like but it could be a big help. The alternative is to do a lot of manually string parsing which I can do but doesn't seem like the best answer.
Advice, tips appreciated.
UPDATE: Yes I did mean alphametcial (A-Za-z) instead of alphanumeric. Edited to reflect that. Thanks for letting me know.

You'd probably want to do this in 2 steps. First, match against:
a\[([^[\]]*)\]
and extract group 1. That'll be the stuff in the square brackets.
Next, repeatedly match against:
[a-z]+(,[0-9]+)*
That'll match things like "abcdefghi,2,3". After the first match you'll need to see if the next character is a comma and if so skip over it. (BTW: if you really meant alphanumeric rather than alphabetic like your examples, use [a-z0-9]*[a-z][a-z0-9]* instead of [a-z]+.)
Alternatively, split the string on commas and reassemble into your word with number groups.

Why wouldn't a regex bring you all the way to a solution?
The following regex works against the given data, but it makes a few assumptions (at least two alphas followed by comma separated single digits).
([a-z]{2,}(?:,\\d)*)
Example:
re = new RegExp('[a-z]{2,}(?:,\\d)*', 'g')
matches = re.exec("a[abcdefghi,2,3,jklmnopqr,1,9,stuvwxyz]")

Assuming you can easily break out the string between the brackets, something like this might be what you're after:
> re = new RegExp('[a-z]+(?:,\\d)*(?:,?)', 'gi')
> while (match = re.exec("abcdefghi,2,3,jklmnopqr,1,9,stuvwxyz")) { print(match[0]) }
abcdefghi,2,3,
jklmnopqr,1,9,
stuvwxyz
This has the advantage of working partially in your malformed case:
> while (match = re.exec("abcdefghi,2,3,jklmnopqr,1,9,stuvwxyz")) { print(match[0]) }
jklmnopqr,1,9,
stuvwxy
The first character class [a-z] can be modified if you meant for it to be truly alphanumeric.