Question

Using c# regex I’m trying to match things in quotes which aren’t also in brackets while also ignoring any white space:

"blah" - match
("blah") - no match
( "blah") - no match
(  "blah") - no match

I’ve got (unescaped):

"(?<=[^(]\s")(.*?)"

which works with the first three but I can’t work out how to deal with more than one space between the first bracket and the quote. Using a + after the s is the same result, using a * means both the last two match. Any ideas?

Answer 1

This should work:

/(?<![^(\s])\s*"([^"]*)"\s*(?![\s)])/

• The first (?<![^(\s]) asserts that there is no whitespace or left parenthesis before the string.

• Then \s* will match any number of whitespace characters.

• ("[^"]*") will match a quoted string, and capture it’s content.

• \s* will match any number of whitespace characters.

• Last, (?![\s)]) will assert that there is no whitespace or right-parenthesis following.

Together they make sure that all the whitespace is matched by each \s*, and that they are not bordering a parenthesis.