Find ampersands that are not part of an entity.

[Ian Skinner-3]

I need to search a very long string for ampersands (&) that are not part
of the non-breaking space entity ( ) and replace them with the
ampersand entity (&).

Using regex can I say select all instances of a character NOT followed
by specific other characters?



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[Peter Boughton]

>  Using regex can I say select all instances of a character NOT followed
>  by specific other characters?

Yes, it's called a negative lookahead, and looks like this: (?!...)

So to find ampersands that are not followed by nbsp; you want:
&(?!nbsp;)

This of course assumes that non-breaking spaces are the only entity
you have - will need something more complex if there are others.

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[StevenLevithan]

Yes, you can do it using a regex construct called a lookahead (in this case a negative lookahead), like so:

&(?!nbsp;)

To only match ampersands that aren't part of any entity (not just  ), you can use this:

&(?!#?\w+;)

Steve
http://blog.stevenlevithan.com

> Subject: Find ampersands that are not part of an entity.
> From: HOF@...
> To: cf-regex@...
> Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 14:14:23 -0700
>
> I need to search a very long string for ampersands (&) that are not part
> of the non-breaking space entity ( ) and replace them with the
> ampersand entity (&).
>
> Using regex can I say select all instances of a character NOT followed
> by specific other characters?
>
>
>
>

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