I have a pattern which goes like this
String1 :"String2",
i have to validate this pattern. here if u see there are two cases, the somestring1 can contain special characters if it is given within double quotes.
eg: "xxxx-xxx" :"yyyyyyyy",--------> is valid
but xxxx-xxx :"yyyyyyyy",--------> is not valid
"xxxx-xxx :"yyyyyyyy",--------> is not valid
So i need to create a regex which will check whether the double quotes is closed properly if it is present in String1.
Short answer: Regex doesn't work like that.
What you can do however, is to use two separate patterns to validate:
\"[^\"]+?\" :.*
To check the one that can contain special characters, and:
[a-zA-Z]+? :.*
To check the one that can't
EDIT:
Thinking some more about it, you could combine the two patterns above like so:
^(\"[^\"]+?\"|[a-zA-Z]+?) :.*$
Which will match something :"something" and "some-thing" :"something" but not "some-thing : "something" or some-thing : "something". Assuming that the string only contains the given text.
If I understand your question right, this simple regex should work
\"string1\" :\"string2\"
Maybe something like this?
(?<normalString>^[a-zA-Z]+$)|(?<specialString>^".*?"$)
This will capture only a-z characters and put them in the "normalString" group, or if there's an string within quotation marks, capture that and put it in the "specialString" group.
"s?