Regex for matching a word without a ( after it

Question

What regex would check a line for a word that is not followed by a ( character? I tried (\w+)(\?!\() but it doesn't work, and (\w+)[^\(] matches anything by treating the last letter as the [^\(] part. I am using the D programming language.

Examples of things that should match:

It should match the asdf in the following:

asdf blah 
asdf.beef
(asdf)

but not in these:

asdf(blah)

However, in asdf(blah), the blah would be matched. Also in asdf blah and asdf.beef, the blah and beef would also be matched.

Answer 1

I don't know anything about D's capabilities. If it supports the perl regexp language, you can do this:

 \w+\b(?!\()

The (?!xxx) construct is used for a zero-width negative lookahead. You need the \b word boundary to keep it from matching all but the last letter of a word that's followed by a paren.

EDIT: I have tweaked M42's good idea below so that it works in D. Try this

 (\w+)\b([^\(]|$)

The first capture group should contain the words you're interested in.

Answer 2

How about this one:

/^\(?(\w+)\b(?:[^\(]|$)/

Not tested with D compiler, but it works in Perl.

According to russ comment, the (?:) construct is unknown in D :

/^\(?(\w+)\b([^\(]|$)/

Answer 3

(\w+)[^\(\w]

so you are negating both the ( and the \w?