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I am struggling with a regex in python. I've spent several hours trying to figure out what is wrong. Here is my content:

Some Title - Description (Gold Edition)
Some Title - Description

I need to match Some Title and optional Gold word in brackets.

I've tried the following regex https://regex101.com/r/9MNYZl/1 :

(.*)\-.*(?:\((.*)[Ee]dition\))*?

But it doesn't capture the word before Edition.

One interesting thing that I tried this for PHP and it worked fine.

I have no ideas what is wrong, please help to solve the issue.

Many thanks.

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The first .* in your pattern will match until the end of the string, then it will backtrack to match the - and the second .* will match again till the end of the string.

As this part of the pattern (?:\((.*)[Ee]dition\))*? is optional, the pattern will suffice at the end of the string.

You could use a negated character class with an optional non capturing group.

To match the first word after the opening parenthesis you could match 1+ word chars \w+ or a broader match using \S+

^([^-]+)-[^\()]+(?:\((\S+) [Ee]dition\))?

In parts

  • ^ Start of string
  • ( Capture group 1
    • [^-]+ Match 1+ times any char except -
  • )- Close group 1 and match -
  • [^()]+ Match 1+ times any char except ( or )
  • (?: Non capturing group
    • \( Match (
    • (\S+) Capture group 2, match 1+ times a non whitespace char
    • [Ee]dition Match a space and [eE]dition
    • \) Match )
  • )? Close non capturing group and make it optional

Regex demo

To capture all until the edition in group 2 instead of a single word:

^([^-]+)-[^()]+(?:\(([^()]+) [Ee]dition\))?

Regex demo

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