Regex Match Except Hyphenated End-of-Line Words

Asked Feb 19 '20 at 23:50

Active Feb 19 '20 at 23:50

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I want to match all words except words that end in a hyphen at the end of a line. I want hyphenated words not at the end of a line to be matched.

>>> re.findall("[A-Za-z0-9']+(?!-$)","In-middle hyphens (yes) but shouldn't match hyphens at end-")
['In', 'middle', 'hyphens', 'yes', 'but', "shouldn't", 'match', 'hyphens', 'at', 'en']

The undesired behavior is the 'en' (last match). I want 'at' to be the last match in this case. I assume that this is a syllable split and I will count the word when it finishes on the next line.

Any ideas of how to make my regex "all-or-nothing" so that it won't match any letters from a word which ends in a hyphen at the end of a line?

asked Feb 19 '20 at 23:50

John

1

Use word boundaries, `r"\b[A-Za-z0-9']+\b(?!-$)"`, [demo](https://regex101.com/r/RZqSvY/1). – Wiktor Stribiżew Feb 19 '20 at 23:51
@WiktorStribiżew that might not suit my needs. Word boundaries split up words with apostrophes. – John Feb 19 '20 at 23:59
Show me a case please. – Wiktor Stribiżew Feb 20 '20 at 00:00
@WiktorStribiżew I was doing one very similar, but with a non-greedy '+'. Yours does work for me, which is good. Can you teach me why this method works, but my original did not? – John Feb 20 '20 at 00:05
Because of backtracking that `[A-Z...]+` allows and `(?!-$)` triggers. Word boundary requires a "word" border. – Wiktor Stribiżew Feb 20 '20 at 00:08
@WiktorStribiżew thanks for sharing your knowledge! – John Feb 20 '20 at 00:24

Regex Match Except Hyphenated End-of-Line Words

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