Question

I’m trying to match every > and >> not surrounded by single or double qoutes.

var a = 'hello > you'; // true
var b = 'hello >> you'; // true
var c = '"hello > you"'; // false
var d = '"hello > you" >> you'; // true
var e = "'hello' > you"; // true
var f = "'hello > you'"; // false

I have been working around for some time but have not come op with anything useful.

Answer 1

If you’re only trying to check that the string matches, you could use something like this:

var regex = /^(?:"[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^"'>]*)*>/;

This checks to make sure that, from the beginning, the string has either a quoted section (single or double) or other characters that are not quotes or the greater than sign, followed by a greater-than sign.

This won’t work well for nested quotes (within the string), but it should work for one layer of quotation marks within the string.