How do I make regex to ignore whitespace within google searches?

[Hark64]

This tapatalk post provides a regex expression, ^https?:/+((www.)?google.com)/search(.)q=(\w+++)(blue|green|red), that allows leechblock to block certain google searches. But it does not handle spaces inside of terms, which show up as a '+' in the url (e.g. blue or blue+red will match but not b+lue, bl+ue, blu+e).

So I can pretty easily invalidate this regex. How do I get it to ignore spaces in a google search query?

[proginosko]

I'm curious. Why would you need to match spaces within search terms?

[Hark64]

I think I explained it but if I don't want to allow searches for the word 'blue' I can get around this by just searching for 'b lue' since google will treat it as 'blue' and give me the same results. But the actual url will be ...q=b+lue so the regex will be pretty easily invalidated.

This can of course happen with different misspellings too but generally spelling a word differently will give different results. Whitespace inside search terms will generally still be understood by google however.

[proginosko]

Thanks for the explanation. I understand now. I didn't know Google did that.

The solution is messy, but it would look like this:

^https?:\/+((www\.)?google\.com)\/search(.*)q=(\w+\++)*(b\+*l\+*u\+*e|g\+*r\+*e\+*e\+*n|r\+*e\+*d)

In sum, put \+* where any space might be between letters.

[Hark64]

I was hoping that wouldn't be the case but thank you so much, I was bashing my head for hours trying to figure out something.
I'm glad that there is some way at least to alter the regex.

[proginosko]

You're welcome. In principle, there's a regex for everything, just not necessarily a pretty one!