regular expression exclude match that contains a string pattern

Question

I'm trying to narrow down my RegEx to ignore form elements with type="submit". I only want to select the portion of elements up to the part class="*" but still ignore if type="submit" comes before or after the class.

My regular expression thus far:

(<(?:input|select|textarea){1}.*[^type="submit"]class=")(((?!form\-control)[a-zA-Z0-9_ -])*")

Test case: Line one should match up to the end of class, and line 2 ignored.

<input type="text" name="name" id="test" class="example-class" max-length="7" required="required">
<input type="submit" class="btn-primary" value="send">

Is this acheivable?

I'm using the atom text editor search and replace tool to perform batch html changes. It's not part of a script. I'm using http://regexr.com/ to build the regex — Kiee, Feb 22 '17 at 12:16
WHY are so many people use `...{1}` what do you think this will change? — Fallenhero, Feb 22 '17 at 12:16
you will need something with negative look ahead! http://www.regular-expressions.info/lookaround.html — Fallenhero, Feb 22 '17 at 12:19
Thanks for the info, I've added an answer, feel free to point out any obvious flaws with the negative look ahead I've used. — Kiee, Feb 22 '17 at 12:31
Obligatory link: [You cannot parse \[X\]HTML with RegEx.](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1072112) — ghoti, Feb 22 '17 at 12:35

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 22 '17 at 12:31

0

Thanks for your comments. The answer was a negative look ahead.

Adding (?!.*type="submit.*) to the start of the regex appears to have given me my desired result.

Working Regex:

(?!.*type="submit.*)(<(?:input|select|textarea).*class=")(((?!form\-control)[a-zA-Z0-9_ -])*")

answered Feb 22 '17 at 12:31

Kiee

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We still think a program that uses a valid HTML parser would make more sense – OneCricketeer Feb 22 '17 at 12:36
I'm not sure why a HTML parser keeps getting referenced. I want to perform a project wide search and replace of multiple HTML files using a regular expression pattern. Is a HTML parser still relevant for this scenario? – Kiee Feb 22 '17 at 12:38
Absolutely. You can write a small script in any language to search over many files in a folder. It just depends on your needs. – OneCricketeer Feb 22 '17 at 12:42

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 22 '17 at 12:55

(<(?:input|select|textarea)\s((?!type="submit")[\w\-]+\b="[^"]*"\s?)*>)

This expression is bound to the single tag.
It is better to avoid expressions like .* since it can go further and match a string which would begin inside one tag and end-up inside another.

regular expression exclude match that contains a string pattern

2 Answers2