Regex To Match String Between Asterisk With Line Breaks

Example: blah blah * Match this text Match this text Match this text Match this text Match this text * more text more text How to

Solution 1:

You can use a negated match here. Notice that I escaped \ the literal newline for this example.

var myString = "blah blah * Match this text Match this text\
            Match this text\
            Match this text\
            Match this text\
            *\
more text more text";

var result = myString.match(/\*([^*]*)\*/);
console.log(result[1]);

// => " Match this text Match this text            Match this text            Match this text            Match this text            "

See Working demo

If you don't want the leading or trailing whitespace, you can use the following to make it non greedy.

var result = myString.match(/\*\s*([^*]*?)\s*\*/);
console.log(result[1]);

// => "Match this text Match this text            Match this text            Match this text            Match this text"

Solution 2:

[\s\S] matches any space and any non-space character. I.e. any character, even line breaks. (tested here).

\*[\s\S]*\*

Also, check this SO question.

Solution 3:

Try this: /(\*)([^\0].+)*(\*)/g:

Live Demo

var regex = /(\*)([^\0].+)*(\*)/g; 
var input = "* Match this text Match this text (this is a line break -> \n) Match this text (\n) Match this text Match this text * more text more text"; 
if(regex.test(input)) {
    var matches = input.match(regex);
    for(var match in matches) {
        alert(matches[match]);
    } 
}
else {
    alert("No matches found!");
}

Solution 4:

These answers will help you both now and in the future.

From the console:

> "blah blah * Match this text Match this text\
            Match this text\
            Match this text\
            Match this text\
            *\
more text more text".match(/[*]([^*]*)[*]/)[1]   

" Match this text Match this text            Match this text            Match this text            Match this text            "