Negative look-ahead in Go regular expressions

I'm trying to use negative look-aheads in Go.

The following regular expression: BBB(((?!BBB).)*)EEE

http://rubular.com/r/Zw1vopp1MF

However, in Go I get:

error parsing regexp: invalid or unsupported Perl syntax: `(?!`

Are there any alternatives?

Negative lookahead isn't supported for technical reasons, specifically because it conflicts with the O(n)-time guarantees of the library. See the golang-nuts group discussion about this, as well as the Caveats section in Regular Expression Matching in the Wild.

You can express the regular expression you've described without negative lookahead:

BBB([^B]|B[^B]|BB[^B])*EEE

Here's an example to demonstrate:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"regexp"
)

func main() {
	re := regexp.MustCompile(`BBB([^B]|B[^B]|BB[^B])*EEE`)
	fmt.Printf("%#v\n", re.FindAllString("BBB EEE BBB..BBB...EEE", -1))
}

dlclark/regexp2 is a port of the .NET framework's System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex engine.

> There are some fundamental differences between .NET strings and Go strings that required a bit of borrowing from the Go framework regex engine as well. I cleaned up a couple of the dirtier bits during the port (regexcharclass.cs was terrible), but the parse tree, code emmitted, and therefore patterns matched should be identical.

It's name dropped at the end of the lengthy discussion about O(n) regular expressions, and is caveated:
> However, I would advise caution as there are benefits to the re2-based engine that are not provided by more full featured engines with lookarounds. If you have the option then stick with the stdlib.

The cost of features is a slower implementation.

Based off your examples and your expected output, the following would work.

re := regexp.MustCompile(`BBB([^B]*)EEE`)

<kbd>GoPlay</kbd>

As suggested by dyoo,

<pre>
<i>string</i>(?:(?!<i>endString</i>).)*?<i>endString</i></code>
</pre>

can be polyfilled as (where char n means the nth char of string):

<pre>
<i>string</i>
(?: # Match 0+ groups, each either

doesn't start with the first char of <i>string</i>,

[^<i>&lt;char 1&gt;</i>]
|

share the first, but not the second,

<i>&lt;char 1&gt;</i>[^<i>&lt;char 2&gt;</i>]
|

share the first two, but not the third,

<i>&lt;char 1&gt;</i><i>&lt;char 2&gt;</i>[^<i>&lt;char 3&gt;</i>]
|

...

|

share the first n - 1, but not the nth,

<i>&lt;char 1&gt;</i>...<i>&lt;char n-1&gt;</i>[^<i>&lt;char n&gt;</i>]
)*?
<i>endString</i>
</pre>

Structure in non-ASCII art (where X denotes a difference):

<pre>
┌──┬──┬──┬─────────────┬────┬──┐
│C1│C2│C3│ ... │Cn-1│Cn│
└──┴──┴──┴─────────────┴────┴──┘
├──┼──┼──┼─────────────┼────┼X <i>C1C2C3</i>...<i>Cn-1</i>[^<i>Cn</i>]
├──┼──┼──┼─────────────┼X │ <i>C1C2C3</i>...[^<i>Cn-1</i>]
│ │ │ │ ... │ │ ...
├──┼──┼X │ │ │ <i>C1C2</i>[^<i>C3</i>]
├──┼X │ │ │ │ <i>C1</i>[^<i>C2</i>]
├X │ │ │ │ │ [^<i>C1</i>]
</pre>

Another representation using nested non-capturing groups:

<pre>
(?: # Match 0+ groups, each consists of

the first char, followed by either

<i>&lt;char 1&gt;</i>
(?:
# the second char, followed by either
<i>&lt;char 2&gt;</i>
(?:
# the third char, followed by either
<i>&lt;char 3&gt;</i>
# ...
(?:
# the (n-1)th char, followed by
<i>&lt;char n-1&gt;</i>
(?:
# something that is not the nth char
[^<i>&lt;char n&gt;</i>]
)
|
# something that is not the (n-1)th char
[^<i>&lt;char n-1&gt;</i>]
)
# ...
|
# or something that is not the third char
[^<i>&lt;char 3&gt;</i>]
)
|
# or something that is not the second char
[^<i>&lt;char 2&gt;</i>]
)
|

or something that is not the first char

[^<i>&lt;char1&gt;</i>]
)*?
</pre>

Structure in non-ASCII art (where X denotes a difference and ┬ a branch):

<pre>
┌──┬──┬──┬─────────────┬────┬──┐
│C1│C2│C3│ ... │Cn-1│Cn│
└──┴──┴──┴─────────────┴────┴──┘
├┬─┼┬─┼┬─┼─────────────┼┬───┼─X <i>C1C2C3</i>...<i>Cn-1</i>[^<i>Cn</i>]
││ ││ ││ │ │└X <i>C1C2C3</i>...[^<i>Cn-1</i>]
... ...
││ ││ │└X│ <i>C1C2</i>[^<i>C3</i>]
││ │└X│ │ <i>C1</i>[^<i>C2</i>]
│└X│ │ │ [^<i>C1</i>]
</pre>

These two do the same thing. For long strings, the second solution will be substantially shorter. For example, let <div> and </div> be the start and end mark, correspondingly. For example:

<div  <span>Foo</span>   div>

will be separated as (where _ denotes a space; with colors):

┌───────┬───┬────┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬────┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐
│ <div_ │ _ │ <s │ p │ a │ n │ > │ F │ o │ o │ </ │ s │ p │ a │ n │ > │ _ │ _ │ _ │ d │ i │ v │ > |
└───────┴───┴────┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴────┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘

As one can observe from the two structures above, there is a repeating pattern, which means the regex can be generated programmatically. Here's such a program, written in pseudocode:

function escape(string)
return string.replace(/[-/\\^$*+?.()|[\]{}]/g, '\\$&')
end
function escapeBracket(char)
return char == ']' ? '\\]' : char
end
function polyfill(string)
regex = []
for index from 0 to string.length do
# string[0] included, string[index] excluded
branch = escape(string.slice(0, index)) + '[^{escapeBracket(string[index])}]'
regex.append(branch)
end
return '(?:{regex.join('|')})*?'
end
polyfill('BBB')    # '(?:[^B]|B[^B]|BB[^B])*?'
polyfill('<div>')  # '(?:[^<]|<[^d]|<d[^i]|<di[^v]|<div[^>])*?'

...or:

function polyfill2(string)
reversedString = string.reverse()
regex = ''
for index from 0 to string.length do
char = reversedString[index]
firstBranch = regex ? escape(char) + regex + '|' : ''
secondBranch = '[^{escapeBracket(char)}]'
regex = '(?:{firstBranch}{secondBranch})'
end
return regex + '*?'
end
polyfill2('BBB')    # (?:B(?:B(?:[^B])|[^B])|[^B])*?
polyfill2('<div>')  # (?:<(?:d(?:i(?:v(?:[^>])|[^v])|[^i])|[^d])|[^<])*?

Try them on regex101:

• polyfill:
  • BBB (PCRE2: 711 steps)
  • <div> (PCRE2: 4021 steps)
• polyfill2:
  • BBB (PCRE2: 814 steps)
  • <div> (PCRE2: 4734 steps)
• Negative lookaheads:
  • BBB (PCRE2: 991 steps)
  • <div> (PCRE2: 5887 steps)

Playground:

<!-- begin snippet: js hide: true console: false babel: false -->

<!-- language: lang-js -->

const [p1, p2, p3] = document.querySelectorAll('div');
const [start, end] = document.querySelectorAll('input');
const data = document.querySelector('#data');
start.addEventListener('input', inputHandler);
end.addEventListener('input', inputHandler);
start.dispatchEvent(new Event('input'));
function inputHandler() {
const escaped = [escape(start.value), escape(end.value)];
[
[p1, polyfill],
[p2, polyfill2],
[p3, lookahead]
].forEach(([element, fn]) => {
element.textContent = escaped.join(fn(start.value));
});
data.textContent = generateData(start.value, end.value);
}
function generateData(start, end) {
const data = [];
const middleLength = 10 + Math.random() * 30 | 0;
const middle = [...Array(middleLength)].map(() => {
const original = (Math.random() > 0.5 ? end : start);
return original[Math.random() * original.length | 0];
}).join('');
for (let i = 0; i < start.length; i++) {
for (let j = 0; j < end.length; j++) {
data.push(
start + start.slice(0, i + 1) +
middle +
end.slice(-j - 1) + end
);
}
}
return data.join('\n');
}
function escape(string) {
return string.replace(/[-/\\^$*+?.()|[\]{}]/g, '\\$&');
}
function escapeBracket(char) {
return char === ']' ? '\\]' : char;
}
function polyfill(string) {
const regex = [];
for (let i = 0; i < string.length; i++) {
const branch = escape(string.slice(0, i)) + `[^${escapeBracket(string[i])}]`;
regex.push(branch);
}
return `(?:${regex.join('|')})*?`;
}
function polyfill2(string) {
const reversedString = [...string].reverse();
let regex = '';
for (let i = 0; i < string.length; i++) {
const char = reversedString[i];
const firstBranch = regex ? escape(char) + regex + '|' : '';
const secondBranch = `[^${escapeBracket(char)}]`;
regex = `(?:${firstBranch}${secondBranch})`;
}
return regex + '*?';
}
function lookahead(string) {
return `(?:(?!${escape(string)}).)*?`;
}

<!-- language: lang-css -->

label {
display: flex;
align-items: start;
flex-direction: column;
gap: 1em;
margin-top: 2em;
}
label > :nth-child(n + 2) {
align-self: stretch;
font-family: monospace;
}
input {
padding: 1.5em 1em;
height: 0;
}
div {
word-break: break-all;
}
#data {
height: 5em;
white-space: pre;
}

<!-- language: lang-html -->

<label>
<span>Start/end:</span>
<input type="text" value="[foo-bar(baz)qux]">
<input type="text" value="[foo-bar(baz)qux]">
</label>
<label>
<span>Polyfill:</span>
<div id="p1"></div>
</label>
<label>
<span>Polyfill2:</span>
<div id="p2"></div>
</label>
<label>
<span>Negative lookahead:</span>
<div id="p3"></div>
</label>
<label>
<span>Random text:</span>
<textarea id="data"></textarea>
</label>

<!-- end snippet -->

(Disclaimer: I don't know Go. This answer was written as suggested by @markalex at q/76035959)

Based on Andy's answer. There is another mod by h2s05 that implements extended regex https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/h2so5/goback AND it implements the same api interface as the normal regexp library, handy if you don't want refactor to support the api differences in dlclark's library