Number of words per line

Question

How can I match the number of words per line and then 5 using regex?

Input1: stack over flow => the regex will not match anything

Input2: stack over flow stack over => the regex will match this string

I tried counting spaces with /\/s/, but that did not help me because I only needed to match strings without words> 5

Also I do not want to use spaces split.

Answer 1

I would rely on whitespace / non-whitespace patterns and allow spaces / leading spaces:

^\s*\S+(?:\s+\S+){4,}\s*$

Watch the demo

Explanation:

• ^ - beginning of line
• \s* - optional number of whitespace characters
• \S+ - one or more non-white characters
• (?:\s+\S+){4,} - 4 or more sequences of one or more whitespace characters, followed by one or more characters without spaces.
• \s* - ()
• $ -

Answer 2

^ *\w+(?: +\w+){4,}$

regex.See demo.

https://regex101.com/r/cZ0sD2/15