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

Capture group 1 of the following regular expression will contain matches of 'foe'.

r'^(?:[^'\n]|\\')*(?:(?

Start your engine!

Python's regex engine performs the following operations.

^           : assert beginning of string
(?:         : begin non-capture group
  [^'\n]    : match any char other than single quote and line terminator
  |         : or
  \\'       : match '\' then a single quote
)           : end non-capture group   
*           : execute non-capture group 0+ times
(?:         : begin non-capture group
  (?