Question

Given the this expression that matches lines that contain minOccurs

<xs:element[^>]+?\sminOccurs\s*=[^>]+>

and this text:

<xs:element name="shipto">
  <xs:complexType>
    <xs:sequence>
      <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
      <xs:element name="address" type="xs:string"/>
      <xs:element name="city" minOccurs="1" type="xs:string"/>
      <xs:element name="country" minOccurs="1" type="xs:string"/>
    </xs:sequence>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

how do I change it from matching xs:element lines that contain minOccurs to xs:element lines that don’t contain minOccurs.

The output expected would be this:

<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:element name="address" type="xs:string"/>

Answer 1

Use XML engine instead of regex. Appropriate XPath:

//xs:element[not(@minOccurs)]

Regex:

<xs:element(?![^>]+?minOccurs=".*?")[^>]*>