The process of unifying two regular expressions can be done in the following steps:

  1. Start with an empty regex : m!!
  2. Extract the common prefix : m! NOT !
  3. Extract the alternating parts A and B from both regexes, and put it in between (?:A|B) : m! NOT (?:".*?"\[MESH\]|\(.*?\))
  4. Go to step 2 if there is more of the regex(es) left : m! NOT (?:".*?"\[MESH\]|\(.*?\)) ?!
  5. Compare your new regex against the old regular expressions to confirm that it matches exactly what the old ones matched.

That way, I end up with m! NOT (?:".*?"\[MESH\]|\(.*?\)) ?!.

In reply to Re: refine regex by Corion
in thread refine regex by rsiedl

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