Regex to match/group repeating characters in a string

Question

I need a regular expression that will match groups of characters in a string. Here's an example string:

qwwwwwwwwweeeeerrtyyyyyqqqqwEErTTT

It should match

(match group) "result"

(1) "q"

(2) "wwwwwwwww"

(3) "eeeee"

(4) "rr"

(5) "t"

(6) "yyyyy"

(7) "qqqq"

(8) "w"

(9) "EE"

(10) "r"

(11) "TTT"

after doing some research, this is the best I could come up with

/(.)(\1*)/g

The problem I'm having is that the only way to use the \1 back-reference is to capture the character first. If I could reference the result of a non capturing group I could solve this problem but after researching I don't think it's possible.

Answer 1

How about /((.)(\2*))/g? That way, you match the group as a whole (I'm assuming that that's what you want, and that's what's lacking from the solution you found).