Regular Expression Help Matching dash not in brackes

[javajoemorgan]

I have worked on this for hours, and cannot come up with how to do it. I need a regular expression that matches a string containing a dash that is not in any way contained in square brackets. Here are some examples of the rules:// Should matchsomething - somethingElse // Should NOT matchsomething[ 4 - 6 ]// Should matchsomething[4-6] - somethingElse// Should matchsomething - somethingElse[ 3 - 5]// Should matchsomething[4 - 6] - somethingElse[1-3]// Should NOT matchsomething[3, 4, 5-6, 7]// Should matchsomething[3, 4, 5-6, 7] - somethingElse[3, 4-5]I was thinking that if I could match what is in brackets, I could maybe figure out the negative... but I've been thinking on it so long now I'm just lost.

[Martin Honnen]

At least for your samples the following work:

<xsl:stylesheet  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"  version="2.0"  xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"  exclude-result-prefixes="xs">    <xsl:output indent="yes"/>    <xsl:variable name="re" as="xs:string">^([^\[\]]*)(\[.*?\])*([^\[\]]*)\-([^\[\]]*)(\[.*?\])*([^\[\]]*)$</xsl:variable>    <xsl:template match="data[matches(., $re)]">	<matched>	  <xsl:value-of select="."/>	</matched>  </xsl:template>    <xsl:template match="data[not(matches(., $re))]">	<not-matched>	  <xsl:value-of select="."/>	</not-matched>  </xsl:template>  </xsl:stylesheet>

When applied to the input

<list>  <data>something - somethingElse</data>  <data>something[ 4 - 6 ]</data>  <data>something[4-6] - somethingElse</data>  <data>something - somethingElse[ 3 - 5]</data>  <data>something[4 - 6] - somethingElse[1-3]</data>  <data>something[3, 4, 5-6, 7]</data>  <data>something[3, 4, 5-6, 7] - somethingElse[3, 4-5]</data></list>

Saxon 9.3 outputs

  <matched>something - somethingElse</matched>  <not-matched>something[ 4 - 6 ]</not-matched>  <matched>something[4-6] - somethingElse</matched>  <matched>something - somethingElse[ 3 - 5]</matched>  <matched>something[4 - 6] - somethingElse[1-3]</matched>  <not-matched>something[3, 4, 5-6, 7]</not-matched>  <matched>something[3, 4, 5-6, 7] - somethingElse[3, 4-5]</matched>

[javajoemorgan]

No wonder my head hurt so much.... I had a significant subset of it, but was definitely missing the beginning/ending bracket exclusions.. .I just had the beginning ([^\[]*) ... ([^\]]) followed by the ending... I'm still absorbing how that works... but thanks...

At least for your samples the following work:

...  <xsl:variable name="re" as="xs:string">^([^\[\]]*)(\[.*?\])*([^\[\]]*)\-([^\[\]]*)(\[.*?\])*([^\[\]]*)$</xsl:variable> ...