Question

I have a regex that almost works as it should 🙂

/test[^test<]/

I am using prep_replace() and I want it to find any occurrence of the string ‘test’ and replace it with test except one scenario when the string is ‘test<‘ (means already replaced).

Test text is:
“This is a test. Is this a test? some test and tests but test< testowanie”

It gives me this result:
“This is a test Is this a test some testand tests but test<
testwanie”

So it correctly excludes string ‘test<‘ but with any other matches replaces ‘test’ + one extra character.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

The square brackets represent a character class, and the ^ represents negation of that character class. The end result is that you are matching the sequence test followed by any one character that is not t, e, s, t or <

Use this instead: /test(?!<)/, to match all occurrences of the sequence test not followed by left angle bracket.