Regular expression: match word not between quotes

Question

I would like a Python regular expression that matches a given word that\'s not between simple quotes. I\'ve tried to use the (?! ...) but without success.

Answer 1

How about this regular expression:

>>> s = '''var foe = 10;
foe = "";
dark_vador = 'bad guy'
' I\m your father, foe ! '
bar = thingy + foe'''
>>>
>>> re.findall(r'(?!\'.*)foe(?!.*\')', s)
['foe', 'foe', 'foe']

The trick here is to make sure the expression does not match any string with leading and trailing ' and to remember to account for the characters in between, thereafter .* in the re expression.