I want to match any non-word character from the beginning and end position of a string, but if it comes across a non-word character which encloses a string, I want it to stop matching right before it.
I created the following regex pattern:
^\W+(?!(\W+)((?!\1).)+\1)?
I expected it to match like is shown in the following image since it would match any non-word characters from the beginning of the string until it reached the enclosing quotes from the pattern in the negative lookahead:
But the result was this:
What am I doing wrong?
>Solution :
You need to use
^\W*?(\W)(?=.*?\b\1\W*$)
See the regex demo. Details:
^– start of string\W*?– zero or more non-word chars, as few as possible(\W)– a non-word char captured into Group 1(?=.*?\b\1\W*$)– a positive lookahead that matches a location that is immediately followed with.*?– any zero or more chars other than line break chars, as few as possible\b– a word boundary\1– same value as in Group 1\W*– zero or more non-word chars$– end of string.