R regex - extract strings between two characters for multiple instances

Question

I am trying to extract some keywords from a string in R as follows.

I want to get the strings in between the first ":" after each "[" and ", " or "\b".

string <- c("[G1]3451:GHEIN, [G2]FR343:4453, [G05]RT3342:34:GR", "[L1]TTG4:4532, [L3]EK445:GHR[1C]", "[RT1]JGR:45,RE")

gsub('\\[\\S+:', '', string)
"GHEIN, 4453, GR" "4532, GHR[1C]"   "45,RE"

The problem is when two ":" are there. I should be getting the output as 34:GR instead of GR.

out <- c("GHEIN, 4453, 34:GR", "4532, GHR[1C]", "45,RE")

How to get the desired result using regex in R?

David Arenburg · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-25 18:10:54Z

4

Make it non-greedy:

gsub('*?\\[\\S+:', '', string)
[1] "GHEIN, 4453, 34:GR" "4532, GHR[1C]"      "45,RE"

edited Jun 25, 2015 at 18:10

David Arenburg

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answered Jun 25, 2015 at 17:54

Alexey Ferapontov

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