Selecting "not matching" data

Question

With the expression below, I can find all the data that contains ToolTipML within the curly brackets. But what I am trying to do is selecting all the data that doesn't contain ToolTipML. Can anyone please point out what I am missing?

({[^{}]*?)(ToolTipML)([^}]*})

here is an example https://regex101.com/r/bNq6kV/1

Possible duplicate of [Regular expression to match a line that doesn't contain a word?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/406230/regular-expression-to-match-a-line-that-doesnt-contain-a-word) — Ulysse BN, Apr 01 '19 at 14:23

Arfeo · Answer 1 · 2019-04-01T14:19:13.643

0

I I understood you correctly, then you might use a negative lookahead:

{((?!ToolTipML)[^{}])*}

https://regex101.com/r/bNq6kV/3

edited Apr 01 '19 at 14:19

answered Apr 01 '19 at 12:40

Arfeo

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thanks for the reply, I tried that before and it is selecting everything, here is an example https://regex101.com/r/bNq6kV/1 – Filmon Ghebrekiros Apr 01 '19 at 12:43

necauqua · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-02T09:05:59.473

-1

Sadly, regex has no pattern negation, however a popular hack is to use repeated pattern of any-match, lookahead and then any-match.

For example, in your case the regex is (?s)\{(?:.(?!ToolTipML).)+?\}

We ensure that every character of input is not preceeded nor followed by the banned pattern. The drawback is that most regex implementations do not support variable-length lookahead/lookbehind patterns, but in your case it works flawlessly.

This is a popular question and it was already answered with more detail and explanations

edited Apr 02 '19 at 09:05

answered Apr 01 '19 at 13:58

necauqua

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thank you anton, I was using only single pattern of lookbehind and it was selecting all the data, but this works flawlessly as you said – Filmon Ghebrekiros Apr 01 '19 at 14:20
The `\{(?:(? – Wiktor Stribiżew Apr 02 '19 at 08:36
Yup, it does match when `ToolTipML` is exactly behind the `}`. Fixed my answer – necauqua Apr 02 '19 at 09:04

Selecting "not matching" data

2 Answers2