looking for regex similar to : \\fq.*\\ft\s[^\:] to find colon that is not present

Question

Dear reader. I would like to find \fq followed by any string thing including ɛ ɔ ɲ ŋ until the first \\ft followed by a space and then not followed by a colon.

Exemple phrase:

\fq cintɔnŋ Natan i ta ŋuŋ kɔnkɔli bo Solomani ŋununu \ft Walima ŋuŋ kɔri Solomani ŋununu

This regex \\fq.*\\ft\s[^\:] is much too greedy .... Any tips on how to limit the search to the first non-occurance?

Thanks in advance,

Bart

Answer 1

Adding a ? after the * is used for non-greedy.

Comments

Thanks for the tip Phil. I am still not there yet .... so I tried: regex:\\fq.*?\\ft\s[^\:] which results in (see below)

The search for  regex:\\fq.*?\\ft\s\: produces a nice list of results with \ft followed by a space and a colon. Indeed, after \ft there should be a space \s always followed by a colon. So, what should the regex be to find the absence of that one colon? My best guess is : regex:\\fq.*?\\ft\s[^\:] but it does not deliver the desired result ...

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 2

When writing a regular expression it is important not to look for too much. When you search for a period it keeps look for anything that is not a new line (or if you are in the regex: search it will look for anything) until it comes to the next item. So the key is to try and search for something stops the search. Often I will use [^\\]* to search for anything that is not a backslash. This would work for you unless you have extra backslashes in your \fq before you get to the \ft. Note that I try to build my expressions in RegExPal so that I can see what is being found as I add to the expression.

Try this expression:

\\fq [^\\]*?\\ft\s[^:]

Comments

Thank you Phil, that did find what I was looking for. I was also mistaken about the : which is not a metacharacter in regex. Actually, the regex \\fq [^\\]*?\\ft\s[^:] and the regex \\fq [^\\]*?\\ft\s[^\:] deliver the same (good) result, which I am trying to understand. So, just for the sake of a better understanding of this regex in PT:

does \s[^:] mean the first non-colon after a space?

then:

would \s[^\:] mean the first non-backslash followed by a colon? Or does it mean the first non-backslash followed by a non-colon?

Much obliged,

Bart.

---

When you put characters inside of the [] regex sees those as alternates (except for the ^ which is the NOT). So [^\:] says not a \ or not a :.  If you have something like t[aeiou]t  it would find a t followed by any of those letters and then another t.

---

Merci beaucoup.