Easiest way to REGEX Capture eveything except what you specify?

Question

I for the life of me cannot figure out how to negate everything but what I want to capture with REGEX.

I get close with [^(\d{4}-\d{3}-\d{3}]

But doing a replace in powershell with an input of: 1234-567-899 ABC 1W(23W) BLUE BIKE30 KIT

I get: 1234-567-8991(2330

Instead of 1234-567-899

[^...] defines a negated class. None of the specified characters is matched - this is not you want, but rather probably a negative lookaround is required, but your question is ambiguous. What do you want to negate? — TonyR, Aug 28 '20 at 07:08
I think i found the answer, i wanted to negate everything but the numbers at the beginning. (?<=\d{4}-\d{3}-\d{3})(.*$) seems to work. — Ryan Jamison, Aug 28 '20 at 07:13

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 28 '20 at 08:51

1

You could also use regex -replace to remove everything except for the stuff you want to keep.

In your example

"1234-567-899 ABC 1W(23W) BLUE BIKE30 KIT" -replace '^([-\d]+).*', '$1'

would return 1234-567-899

answered Aug 28 '20 at 08:51

Theo

Liju · Answer 2 · 2020-08-28T08:56:22.623

0

Please try with (?:^\d{4}-\d{3}-\d{3})(.*)$

edited Aug 28 '20 at 08:56

answered Aug 28 '20 at 07:07

Liju

Doesnt that take it out of the negated set? I want to REGEX everything following the group of numbers. – Ryan Jamison Aug 28 '20 at 07:10

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 28 '20 at 08:25

To match any text after <4-DIGITS>-<3-DIGITS>-<3-DIGITS> pattern at the start of the string, you may use

(?<=^\d{4}-\d{3}-\d{3}).*

See the regex demo. Details:

(?<=^\d{4}-\d{3}-\d{3}) - a positive lookbehind that matches a location that is immediately preceded with
- ^ - start of string
- \d{4} - four digits
- - - a hyphen
- \d{3}-\d{3} - three digits, -, three digits
.* - any 0 or more chars other than newline chars, as many as possible

3 Answers3