match everything except three consecutive double quotes

Question

I'm looking for a regex to parse everything but three consecutive double quotes. The problem is that when I use a normal negative lookahead the consecutive double quotes get gobbled and there it doesn't really match what I want.

Let's assume I have the following text:

Lorem Ipsum
"""
sdsdfgsdf
"""
bar

And want to linewise-regex to match the first, third and fifth row, but not the """.

I've tried the following regex: /(?!""").*/, but that's when the double quotes get gobbled. Trying to match one double quote at a time using ["] fails too: /(?!["]["]["]).*/

I'm using Python to match the regex.

Any ideas how I can make this regex work?

`re.findall(r'^(?!"{3}$).+', s, re.M)`? See https://regex101.com/r/piWLvQ/1 — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 09 '19 at 15:22
You want to process your input line-wise and a line with nothing but 3 consecutive double quotes should be sorted out? Do a string comparison. — Tomalak, Jul 09 '19 at 15:23
It also seems you may simply `[x.strip() for x in s.split('"""')]` ([demo](https://ideone.com/84AzDu)). — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 09 '19 at 15:33
`"""` is a regex pattern, too. `[x.strip() for x in re.split('"""', s)]` — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 09 '19 at 15:34
Globally replace `(?m)^"""(?:\r?\n)?` with nothing. Then split the string on newlines. — , Jul 09 '19 at 15:36

The fourth bird · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-09T15:30:29.687

3

The unanchored pattern (?!""").* will match any char 0+ times if what is on the right is not """. Since it is not anchored, it will match after the first " in """ because at that position the assertion will succeed.

You have to use an anchor ^ to assert the start of the string and add .* to the negative lookahead if those 3 double quotes can not occur in the string:

^(?!.*""").*$

Or only use the 3 consecutive quotes if those are the only chars in the string.

^(?!"""$).*$

Regex demo

edited Jul 09 '19 at 15:30

answered Jul 09 '19 at 15:22

The fourth bird

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more simpify `^(?!"{3}).*$` – frankegoesdown Jul 09 '19 at 15:24
@frankegoesdown That is also possible of course, `"""` is 3 characters :-) – The fourth bird Jul 09 '19 at 15:26

match everything except three consecutive double quotes

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