Regex Exclude Comments

Question

I want to have a Regex that will not return the strings that are enclosed in html comments starts in <!-- and/or ends in -->

I currently only have this to check if it is starting in <!-- and has a text equal to hello:

^(?!<!--).*hello.*$

It seems to work fine but when I test my examples that are multiline, it doesn't return any match at all.

Here is what I test it with:

hello there
<!- hello there -->
<!-- hello there -->

So I expect that the first two would be returned as matches:

hello there
<!- hello there -->

But this Regex test returns no result, unless I only have the first line (hello there) given: regexr.com/5t1ng

Help anyone?? And how to have a Regex check to exclude in matches if ending in -->?

That is, I expect that:

• <!-- hello - shouldn't match
• hello --> - shouldn't match
• <-- hello --> - shouldn't match
• <!- hello - should match
• <-- hello - should match
• <-- hello -> should match

Thanks!