How do I match everything except matched value?

Question

/(\[.*?\])/g

Now I want to change that regex to matches everything except current-matches. How can I do that?

For example:

Current regex:

 here is some text [anything123][/21something] and here is too [sometext][/afewtext] and here // ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I want this:

 here is some text [anything123][/21something] and here is too [sometext][/afewtext] and here // ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^

Just use replace to replace the matches. str.replace(/(\[.*?\])/g, '') — Tushar
– Tushar, Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 12:57
@Tushar I want to know is there any approach to match everything except pattern in regex? — stack
– stack, Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 12:58
I would follow Tushar's suggestion using replace, that's what I was going to say. — Veverke
– Veverke, Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 13:09
\[[^\]]+\](?:^|\s)([\w']+)(?!\])\b|(?:^|\s)([\w']+)(?!\])\b. See Javascript Regex for all words not between certain characters — Tushar
– Tushar, Commented Feb 28, 2016 at 13:21

Tushar · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-28 13:09:29Z

2

Match what's inside or capture what's outside ^{the trick}

\[.*?\]|([^[]+)

See demo at regex101

Demo:

var str = 'here is some text [anything123][/21something] and here is too [sometext][/afewtext] and here'; var regex = /\[.*?\]|([^[]+)/g; var res = ''; // Do this until there is a match while(m = regex.exec(str)) { // If first captured group present if(m[1]) { // Append match to the result string res += m[1]; } } console.log(res); document.body.innerHTML = res; // For DEMO purpose only

edited Feb 28, 2016 at 13:09

Tushar

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answered Feb 28, 2016 at 13:02

bobble bubble

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5 Comments

Tushar Over a year ago

@stack This does the same thing. You just need to get the first captured group and join them.

stack Over a year ago

@Tushar Yeah I know the content of $1 is exactly what I need. btw, I can do that exactly as you said (using .replace()), But to be honest, I want to know how can I do that using lookahead (?!)? (Because I saw an approach using lookahead somewhere)

stack Over a year ago

@Tushar Thank you .. yes it works ... But I think I cannot tell you what I want exactly .. :-) !! All I want to know is: how do I define a regex to matches everthing except its pattern (pure regex)

bobble bubble Over a year ago

@stack you want this but this does not work in JS regex :p

bobble bubble Over a year ago

@stack Because that are PCRE verbs. You could try like this with lookaheads but this is expensive and more prown to fail.

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