Question

I need a regex that will match strings of letters that do not contain two consecutive dashes.

I came close with this regex that uses lookaround (I see no alternative):

([-a-z](?<!--))+

Which given the following as input:

qsdsdqf–sqdfqsdfazer–azerzaer-azerzear

Produces three matches:

qsdsdqf-
sqdfqsdfazer-
azerzaer-azerzear

What I want however is:

qsdsdqf-
-sqdfqsdfazer-
-azerzaer-azerzear

So my regex loses the first dash, which I don’t want.

Who can give me a hint or a regex that can do this?

Answer 1

This should work:

-?([^-]-?)*

It makes sure that there is at least one non-dash character between every two dashes.