I have the following regex with a positive lookahead:
/black(?=hand)[ s]/
I want it to match blackhands or blackhand. However, it doesn't match anything. I am testing on Regex101.
What am I doing wrong?
See Question&Answers more detail:osLookahead does not consume the string being searched. That means that the [ s]
is trying to match a space or s immediately following black. However, your lookahead says that hand must follow black, so the regular expression can never match anything.
To match either blackhands or blackhand while using lookahead, move [ s]
within the lookahead: black(?=hand[ s])
. Alternatively, don't use lookahead at all: blackhand[ s]
.