Regex search problem/question

amweiss98

I took the code for searching with regex (https://datatables.net/examples/api/regex.html) and put it on my server here
https://www.thrivezone.org/z2.php
I changed the table to demonstrate my problem by changing some names to 'alum' and 'balum'
To find only records with alum (and not balum), I would usually use this expression
[^b]alum
But this returns nothing. If my regex expression is correct, why isn't it returning anything?
Thanks

kthorngren

I tried your test page and it returns a search result. Whether I use the global or name column and enable regex searching for [^b]alum returns rows with both alum and balum. If I change the search to ^[^b]alum then only rows with alum are displayed.

Kevin

amweiss98

Thanks Kevin...not sure why it works this way, but it does work.

kthorngren

not sure why it works this way, but it does work.

In what way are you referring?

Kevin

amweiss98

why you need two ^ when you only need to eliminate one character...that's what I don't understand..anyway, thanks

kthorngren

You are right. Both of us had the wrong regex. Your regex needs to be more like this:
\b(?!b)\w*alum\b

With this you will get alum, 'calum(or any character(s) before alum exceptb. The\b` is a word boundary.

With this [^b]alum there needs to be one character (but not b) before alum to match. Which is why alum did not produce any results.

Kevin

amweiss98

perfect...that works...thanks so much