Replace word not in quotes

Question

I'm looking to replace a word that's not in quotes, whether single or double, accounting for escapes as well.

My test case:

Trying to replace

`obj1 = {
  name: person,
  favoriteQuote: "I am my own person.",
}`

person with "Joe" .

Expected result:

`obj1 = {
  name: "Joe",
  favoriteQuote: "I am my own person.",
}`

I saw this question: Match and replace a word not in quotes (string contains escaped quotes) which I thought was similar and could be a good starting point the accepted answer does not work at all:

https://regex101.com/r/Lfan64/3

What's a regex that could do this? Thanks.

Broader context since the question was confusing:

It looks like this:

people = ["Joe", "Bob", "Sally"]

people.forEach(function (person) {
  saveEval(template.replace(regex, person))
});

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly, you have a string and want to replace person with "Joe" . If so, the following regex may help:

 const str = `obj1 = { name: person, favoriteQuote: "I am my own person.", }`; console.log( str.replace(/(?<=name:\s?)[^,|\n]+/gm, ' "Joe"') );

And this is how you could loop through an array:

 const str = `obj1 = { name: person, favoriteQuote: "I am my own person.", }`; const people = ["Joe", "Bob", "Sally"]; people.map((v) => console.log(str.replace(/(?<=name:\s?)[^,|\n]+/gm, ` "${v}"`)));