String Pattern to match "x by y"

Question

I'm trying to create a string pattern which will match either (with quotes included):

• "x by y"
• x by y
• 'x by y'

I've tried to use the following pattern: "\"" ~~ ___ ~~ "by" ~~ ___ ~~ "\"" which only matches something with " and tried to find an "or" symbol similar to regex | but to no avail.

Question: What symbols / tools can I use to develop a pattern which matches the above cases?

Question: What is the "correct" translation from a regex approach to a Mathematica approach? Are they the same?

Answer 1

Here is how I would do it:

quotePattern = { "\"" , "'", "" };
stringPattern = quotePattern ~~ __ ~~ "by" ~~ __ ~~ quotePattern;

StringMatchQ[ #, stringPattern ] & /@ { "x by y", "\"x by y\"", "'x by y'" }

{ True, True, True }

Edit

Be careful what you wish for ... as they say: The OP wants to extract "title by author" from a list of strings I assume. For example:

string = "Some surrounding text. \"The Machine That Changed the World\" by Womack, Jones, and Roos. And it fails.";

Now the above pattern will of course not work. We have to be more precise:

quotePatternMod = { "\"", "'" };
StringCases[ string,
    Shortest[a : quotePatternMod ~~ b : __ ~~ c : "by" ~~ d : ___ ~~ "."] :> a ~~ b ~~ c ~~ d
] 

{"\"The Machine That Changed the World\" by Womack, Jones, and Roos"}