CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#regexvisual-studio
Aaron L.
Aaron L.

Reputation: 235

VS 2015 Find and replace this string but not that string

I am using VS regex to try and delete the string Windows.Forms but not System.Windows.Forms

I can use this to find all of the lines:

^(?!.*System.Windows.Forms).Windows.Forms.$

But I cant use a replace for that since it obviously deletes the whole line. Any ideas?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 103

Answers (1)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626802

You just need to adjust the lookbehind to

(?<!System\.)Windows\.Forms

Or with word boundary to be more precise:

(?<!\bSystem\.)\bWindows\.Forms\b

See the regex demo

The lookbehind is checking the text before the current position meets some subpattern. So, the text you need to match and consume is Windows.Forms, but it should not be preceded with System.. Thus, the lookbehind (negative one) should only contain System\. (or \bSystem\.).

Note that the dots must be escaped to match literal dots.

Upvotes: 3

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