Regex formula not looking inside HTML tags

Question

My regex pattern works for all text not contained within HTML tags:

((?<!-)\btest(?!-)\b)(?=[^<>]*(?:<\w|$))

In the example below I need it to find both instances of 'test' in these two strings:

vdsv ds test dsv sdlvk 
<b>dsjn vkjsd test sv</b>

Answer 1

In .NET, you may leverage an infinite width lookbehind:

\b(?<!-)test\b(?<!<[^<>]*)(?!-|[^<>]*>)

See the .NET regex demo

In code:

var pattern = @"\b(?<!-)test\b(?<!<[^<>]*)(?!-|[^<>]*>)";

Details

• \\b - word boundary
• (?<!-) - a negative lookbehind that fails the match if there is a - immediately to the left of the current location
• test - word test
• \\b - word boundary
• (?<!<[^<>]*) - a negative lookbehind that fails the match if there is a < and any 0 or more chars other than < and > immediately to the left of the current location
• (?!-|[^<>]*>) - a negative lookahead that fails the match if there is a - or any 0+ chars other than < and > followed with a > immediately to the right of the current location.