Regex: Match specific string unless contained in a longer string

General
#1

Good morning,

I'm struggling to put together a regular expression which could be described as "match a specific string, unless it is contained within another string".

Specifically, I'm looking to match the string "nox", but not when it is in the string "monoxide".

How might I best approach this?

#2

Will word boundaries, \b, work for you?

X <- 'match the string "nox", but not when it is in the string "monoxide".'
> gsub("\\bnox\\b", "HERE", X)
[1] "match the string \"HERE\", but not when it is in the string \"monoxide\"."
1 Like
#3

That does the job exactly, thanks! Glad it was as easy as that!

#4

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