How do I find the first occurrence of "&" in a string using regex?

Question

I have a set of data and each row has different number of &. How do I find and match the first & in each row using regex?

Sample data:

I am working on a RPA system and when I put & as regex, it matches all & occurrences instead of the first.

So wonder if you guys have any alternatives.

Thanks!

in the RPA system that I am using, when I put & it matches all & that appear in the string. So I wonder if there is another way to find the & — Yollev Tay, Apr 01 '20 at 06:49
So, what is the regex you tried that you have trouble with? In order to have *have any alternatives*, we need to know where you stand. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Apr 01 '20 at 06:57
I tried with /&/. It works in https://regex101.com. But when I put it in my RPA system, it matches all & in the string. — Yollev Tay, Apr 01 '20 at 07:01
So, tried anything else? `\A[^&]*\K&`, for example? Or `(?<=\A[^&]*)&`? — Wiktor Stribiżew, Apr 01 '20 at 07:12
Is it possible to disable global flag `/g`? Or use capture groups like `/(&).*/`? — Cray, Apr 01 '20 at 07:12
Glad it worked for you. Please also consider upvoting if my answer proved helpful to you (see [How to upvote on Stack Overflow?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173399/how-to-upvote-on-stack-overflow)) as you are entitled to the upvoting privilege after reaching 15 rep points. Note you may upvote all the answers that turned out helpful. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Apr 02 '20 at 06:41

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 01 '20 at 07:18

Since the regex engine you are using is .NET, you may use a positive lookbehind based solution:

(?<=\A[^&]*)&

Details

(?<=\A[^&]*) - a location in the string that is immediately preceded with
- \A - start of string
- [^&]* - 0 or more chars other than &
& - a & char.

1 Answers1