Question

I can’t find how to exclude a string in my regex :

ex :

<div\s[^>]+>

will find a <div and every characters before its closing >

Now I would like to find the <div...> then everything but a </div> then a </div>. Something like :

 <div\s[^>]+>[^(</div>)]*</div>

The problem is [^abc] is excluding a or b or c. How can I exclude the “abc” string?

Answer 1

That’s what negative lookahead assertions are for:

<div\s[^>]+>(?:(?!</div>).)*</div>

Explanation:

(?:          # Match...
 (?!</div>)  # unless we're right before a </div>
 .           # any character.
)*           # Repeat as needed

You might want to make the slash optional ((?!</?div>)); otherwise you would trip up on nested tags like in <div> foo <div> bar </div> baz </div>.