@Terry-r said :

Personally though my alternate regex works I would use @guy038 one as it is more readable and possibly also more defined!

In the same way, I would say that @terry-r’s solution is clever too and is, finally, very easy to interpret ;-))

Indeed, this new syntax :[^:]*?$ finds a colon char, followed with the shortest range of characters, possibly null, different from a colon, before an end of line !

Cheers,

guy038

the correct regex to process should be :[^:\r\n]*$

@Luuk-v , Another regex which would also have produced the same answer is
:[^:]*?$
Note the addition of the ? behind the *. It turns a “greedy” operator into a “non-greedy” (minimalist) operator. So this would stop at the very first instance of the EOL character(s).
Also note that although you used the $ character as an end of line marker outside of the negative class it does NOT work inside.

Personally though my alternate regex works I would use @guy038 one as it is more readable and possibly also more defined!

Terry

As @terry-r said, the simple negative class [^:] will match absolutely any character which is different from a colon symbol :, including possible EOL characters as \n and \r !

So assuming your sample text :

ABC:DEF:GHI
JKL
MNO
PQR:STU:VWX

With your regex :[^:]*$ :

• First, the part : searches for a literal colon char

• Then, the part [^:]* for the greatest range, possibly null, of characters all different from a colon, including EOL chars

• But ONLY IF  that range ends the current line, because of the $ assertion

This explains why your regex selects all the zone :GHI...........MNO.

You could say “But, WHY it does not select the EOL chars of line MNO and, also, the string PQR right before a colon char ?”. Note that I asked myself the same question ;-)

• It cannot match the EOL chars of line MNO as, in that case the $ assertion would not be verified. Indeed, after the EOL chars of line MNO, there is not an end of line but the letter P of the next line !

• And it cannot match the string PQR, too, because the string PQR is not immediately followed with an end of line !

So, the correct regex to process should be :[^:\r\n]*$ which selects only the strings :GHI and :VWX, ending their lines, which is, probably, the result that you expect to, don’t you ?

Best regards,

guy038

Is this correct behaviour?

Unfortunately yes. When you use a negative class such as your [^:] you are saying anything but the : character, and that includes an end of line character.

So once you regex finds the first : it then grabs other characters until it reaches the next :. The next part requires it to also have an end of line $, so it backs up until the last one found and stops there.

You might want to read
https://npp-user-manual.org/docs/searching/#regular-expressions
Look for “The complement of the characters” which states this. To avoid a multi line capture you also need to include in the negative class the end of line character.

Terry