Question

how do i do this with regex?

i want to match this string: -myString

but i don’t want to match the -myString in this string: --myString

myString is of course anything.

is it even possible?

EDIT:

here’s a little more info with what i got so far since i’ve posted a question:

string to match: some random stuff here -string1, --string2, other stuff here regex: (-)([\w])* 

This regex returns me 3 matches: -string1, - and -string2

ideally i’d like it to return me only the -string1 match

Answer 1

Assuming your regex engine supports (negative) lookbehind:

/(?<!-)-myString/ 

Perl does, Javascript doesn’t, for example.