note ikegami <p>That's not how you use the negative lookahead. It won't work. For example, <c> '<a href="..." target="...">' =~ / <a # Matches '<a'. .+? # Matches ' '. (?!target) # Matches. (/\Gtarget/ doesn't match.) .+? # Matches 'href="..." target="..."'. > # Matches '>'. /isx; </c> and <c> '<a target="..." href="...">' =~ / <a # Matches '<a'. .+? # Matches ' t'. (?!target) # Matches. (/\Gtarget/ doesn't match.) .+? # Matches 'arget="..." href="..."'. > # Matches '>'. /isx; </c> <p>The common use of a negative lookahead is <c> /(?:(?!$re).)*/ </c> <p>See [id://544954|my earlier post] for the fix. 544944 544948