Visual Studio Code regex for (not (xx))

Question

I am trying to have a regex to capture all strings with this shape:

(not  (xx))

I.e. a parenthesis, a "not", two empty spaces, two caracters between parenthesis and a closing parenthesis

I have tried:

(not  (*))

But I get:

Invalid regular expression. Nothing to repeat

Any idea ?

You seem to not yet know what regular expressions are. See here for the docs. (Note you don't need the / / in VSCode.) So for your case for example it would be \(not \(.*?\)\) (however, your screenshot shows only one empty space, not two). Or, if you actually wanted to match exactly two characters in the parentheses, \(not \(..\)\) — CherryDT
– CherryDT, Commented Sep 30, 2022 at 10:31

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-30 10:32:55Z

2

The Nothing to repeat error is due to the * quantifier used to quantify an opening bracket of a capturing group construct.

You need to 1) escape special ( and ) chars, and 2) match any text between the closest ( and ) with a negated character class, here, with [^()]*:

\(not  \([^()]*\)\)

Details:

\(not \( - a (not ( string
[^()]* - zero or more chars other than ( and )
\)\) - a )) string.

If there can be any zero or more whitespace chars between not and (, replace the literal spaces with \s*. If there must be one or more whitespaces, use \s+ instead:

\(not\s*\([^()]*\)\)
\(not\s+\([^()]*\)\)

edited Sep 30, 2022 at 10:32

answered Sep 30, 2022 at 10:27

Wiktor Stribiżew

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