如何构建正则表达式以匹配模式，同时排除某些与模式匹配的已知单词

Question

How do I build a regex to match a pattern while excluding certain known words that would match the pattern. In example I have this string:

I like to dream at going to do hikin g.

and I have the following regex: \\b(.{1,2}(\\s|.|-|_)){2,}

This matches:

to dream at

to do hikin g.

What I want is to change this regex in a way to match:

dream

hikin g.

If I change it to this \\b([^(to)]{1,2}(\\s|.|-|_)){2,}

it will partially work but it would exclude individual letters like 't' 'o' instead of the entire word 'to'

How to solve this?

Answer 1

You may use

/\b(?!(?:I|at|[td]o)\b)\w{1,2}(?:[\W_](?!(?:I|at|[td]o)\b)\w{1,2})*\b/

See this Rubular demo

It matches

• \\b - a word boundary
• (?!(?:I|at|[td]o)\\b)\\w{1,2} - followed with a 1 or 2 word char word not equal to I , at , to or do
• (?:[\\W_](?!(?:I|at|[td]o)\\b)\\w{1,2})* - 0+ repetitions of:
  • [\\W_] - a non-word char or _
  • (?!(?:I|at|[td]o)\\b)\\w{1,2} - see above
• \\b - a word boundary.