Can I use an OR in regex without capturing what's enclosed?
Solution 1:
Depending on the regular expression implementation you can use so called non-capturing groups with the syntax (?:…):
((?:a|b)c)
Here (?:a|b) is a group but you cannot reference its match. So you can only reference the match of ((?:a|b)c) that is either ac or bc.
Solution 2:
If your implementation has it, then you can use non-capturing parentheses:
(?:a|b)