problem with this regex: \b.{1,6}\b

[Bahaa0013]

I made a simple regex “\b.{1,6}\b” that matches every word contains less than 7 charecters,
And yes it works, But the problem that it’s matching this type of words: “ab!cdefghi”, while it contains 10 charecters… maybe because it contains “!” symbol.
so is there any way to make a regex that don’t match words contains +6 charecters even it contains a symbol like “!”

[Mark Olson]

@Bahaa0013
(?<!\S)\S{1,6}(?!\S)

abdc!
#$#$@
$##@
~~~NO
&
*(
#R%$%$%#
abcdefg

My regex will mark only first six lines, not last two.

Note that I chose the negative assertions “not not a whitespace before or after” ((?<!\S) and (?!\S)) because that assertion matches at the beginning and end of the file, and the alternative “must be a whitespace” ((?<=\s) and (?=\s)) do not.

[Alan Kilborn]

@Mark-Olson

Nice point about matching at start/end of file.

[guy038]

Hello, @mark-olson,

Indeed, I would not have thought of that. As always, it is the borderline cases that need to be studied !

Best Regards,

guy038

[Bahaa0013]

@Mark-Olson
Thank you very much, it worked very well…
Also thanks to everyone who tried to help.