Question

In the example string "a f e $s $a", I want to match all characters without a preleading “$” character.

I tried to use a negative look-ahead:

"(?!\\$)[a-z]"

But it also matches the $s and $a. What I am doing wrong ?

Answer 1

That’s a lookahead assertion, which means that it will match any letter that is not a dollar sign, which is to say, all of them 🙂

You need a lookbehind:

"(?<!\\$)[a-z]"