Question

I need to remove all “‘s” from text, except word “let’s”.

For example: “jerry’s let’s cake’s” >> “jerry let’s cake”.

strText = Regex.Replace(strText, @"\b(?!let's)([a-z-]+)'s\b", @"$1");

– this works, but it takes long time on big texts.

strText = Regex.Replace(strText, @"\b(?!let's)(?<=[a-z-]+)'s\b", "");

• this one is not ignoring “let’s”

What am I doing wrong in the second statement?

Answer 1

The simple trick you missed is using \b in the negative lookbehind :

(?<!\blet)'s

Working example: http://regexr.com?31g9c