Regex for matching a character, but not when it's enclosed in square bracket

Question

Input string:

[Wsg-Fs]-A-A-A-Cgbs-Sg7-[Wwg+s-Fs]-A-A-Afk-Cgbs-Sg7

Desired output is a string array:

[Wsg-Fs] A A A Cgbs Sg7         


        

Answer 1

Assuming there are no nested square brackets, you can use the following to only match - characters that are outside of square brackets:

-(?![^\[]*\])

Example: http://regex101.com/r/sX5hZ2

This uses a negative lookahead, with the logic that if there is a closing square bracket before any opening square brackets, then the - that we tried to match is inside of brackets.

Answer 2

Resurrecting this ancient question to offer another solution, since the current one only checks that a splitting - is not followed by a ], which does not guarantee that it is enclosed in brackets.

\[[^\]]*\]|(-)

Then splitting on Group 1 (see the Group 1 captures in the bottom right panel of the demo)

To split on Group 1, we first replace Group 1 with something distinctive, such as SPLIT_HERE, then we split on SPLIT_HERE

using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
class Program
{
static void Main() {
string s1 = @"[Wsg-Fs]-A-A-A-Cgbs-Sg7-[Wwg+s-Fs]-A-A-Afk-Cgbs-Sg7";
var myRegex = new Regex(@"\[[^\]]*\]|(-)");
var group1Caps = new StringCollection();

string replaced = myRegex.Replace(s1, delegate(Match m) {
if (m.Groups[1].Value == "") return m.Groups[0].Value;
else return "SPLIT_HERE";
});

string[] splits = Regex.Split(replaced,"SPLIT_HERE");
foreach (string split in splits) Console.WriteLine(split);

Console.WriteLine("\nPress Any Key to Exit.");
Console.ReadKey();

} // END Main
} // END Program

Here's a full working online demo

Reference

How to match pattern except in situations s1, s2, s3

How to match a pattern unless...