Matching second last word in sentence through regular expression?

Question

I'm looking for a way to match the second last word on a line, such as this:

123 Smith St Melbourne VIC 3000

I'd like to match just "VIC". Does someone have a regex I can use?

Answer 1

Depending of what is a "word" for you, you can use:

• A word is 1 or more characters that is not a space
  • \S+(?=\h+\S+$) will match 1 or more not space followed by 1 or more horizontal space then 1 or more non space
• A word is 1 or more alphabetic character
  • [a-zA-Z]+(?=\h+[a-zA-Z]+$)
• A word is 1 or more alphanumeric character
  • [a-zA-Z0-9]+(?=\h+[a-zA-Z0-9]+$)
• A word is 1 or more any letter in any language
  • \pL+(?=\h+\pL+$)
• A word is 1 or more any letter or digit in any language
  • [\pL\pN]+(?=\h+[\pL\pN]+$)

Answer 2

To match the second word from the end use: (?!(\w+\s\w+$))|(?:.+?)

To replace everything other than the second last word use: (?!(\w+\s\w+$))(?:.+?)

You might need to do something about special characters you may have, though.