Regex that counts words but ignores words encased in curly braces

Question

I am absolutely horrible with regex and avoid it when i can, however i can but this seems suitable for a bit of regex. What i am interested in is counting the number of words in a string excluding words encased in {}

Example:

input : someting test whatever {not} and also {not you}
output : someting test whatever and also

My best try was

\w+(?![^{}]*})

Answer 1

You can match braces remove them using javascript. Just note, like cyberbrain's comment, this won't be robust for many nested braces.

    const p = 'someting test whatever {not} and also {not you}'

    const regex = /{.*?}/g;
    console.log(p.replace(regex, ''));
    // expected output: "someting test whatever  and also"

Note the double-space in the output, because {not} is removed but not the spaces around it.

To explain the regex:

• The /s are the regex's delimiters.
• The g at the end is a global flag, indicating the replace should act on every match in the input string, not just the first match.
• .*?:
  • . means any character
  • *? means to match any 0 or more of what came before it, but the ? makes it "lazy", meaning it'll return the shortest match found.