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Asked: 2026-06-05T21:08:34+00:00

Consider following string Some string with quotes and \pre-slashed\ quotes Using regex, I want

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Consider following string

"Some" string with "quotes" and \"pre-slashed\" quotes

Using regex, I want to find all the double quotes with no slash before them. So I want the regex to find four matches for the example sentence
This….

[^\\]"

…would find only three of them. I suppose that’s because of the regex’s state machine which is first validating the command to negate the presence of the slash.

That means I need to write a regex with some kind of look-behind, but I don’t know how to work with these lookaheads and lookbehinds…im not even sure that’s what I’m looking for.

The following attempt returns 6, not 4 matches…

"(?<!\\)
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team
    "(?<!\\")

    Is what you’re looking for

    If you want to match “Some” and “quotes”, then

    (?<!\\")(?!\\")"[a-zA-Z0-9]*"

    will do

    Explanation:

    • (?<!\\") – Negative lookbehind. Specifies a group that can not match before your main expression
    • (?!\\") – Negative lookahead. Specifies a group that can not match after your main expression
    • "[a-zA-Z0-9]*" – String to match between regular quotes

    Which means – match anything that doesn’t come with \” before and \” after, but is contained inside double quotes

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