I am writing a regular expression in .NET that needs to ignore things
in quotes but find all other words in the string.  It should ignore
functions things followed by an open paren.  The following almost
works:

Regex(@"(?<!\G[^""]*""[^""]*)\b([a-zA-Z])(\w+)?\b(?!\()");

except when there are two quoted strings without a word in between. 
Here is the code sample:  In this example it should return only
fruits.  Any ideas how to fix the expression?  I need the expression
to work in all cases.

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
             Regex rx_var = new
Regex(@"(?<!\G[^""]*""[^""]*)\b([a-zA-Z])(\w+)?\b(?!\()");
             rx_var.Replace(@"Apple 10 banana ""peas"", ""carrots"".,
1noword sum( kiwi ""potato"" decode(sum(strawberry))", new
MatchEvaluator(translate_var));
        }

        public string translate_var(Match m)
        {
            string x = m.ToString();
            MessageBox.Show(m.ToString());
            return x;
        }

Hi bobopico-ga,
   I rewrote the expression from scratch and came up with the following:

    Regex(@"\b[A-Za-z]+\b(?!\()\b(?!"")");

   The above gives the correct results for the test string you have provided.
   
   You can test this regex with other test strings, and post a request
for clarifications if anything needs to be modified.

   Hope this helps.

Regards,
theta-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by bobopico-ga on 13 Aug 2006 09:53 PDT

So the following string doesnt seem to work:

"Apple 10 banana ""peas corn"", ""carrots""., 1noword sum( kiwi
""potato"" decode(sum(strawberry))"

it returns peas although it is in a quoted string.  (the double quotes
are actually in C# translated to a single quote).

Rahul

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Request for Answer Clarification by bobopico-ga on 13 Aug 2006 13:55 PDT

One additional clarification is the _ are accepted as part of a work
so AVG_COST should be returned as a word. The initial posted
expression does that correctly as well, but I think when it was
rewritten it no longer does that.

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Clarification of Answer by theta-ga on 16 Aug 2006 22:25 PDT

Hi bobopico-ga,
   I'm sorry I was unable to respond earlier dues to some issues with
my Internet access. I will be posting the correct solution soon.
   My apologies for the delay.
Regards,
Theta-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by bobopico-ga on 18 Aug 2006 20:23 PDT

Thanks for the update, I had no idea how long to wait.  I will make
sure to send a note to adjust the rating once the right answer is
posted.  Thanks again for your time!

I am waiting on a response to repost this question.  I posted
clarification on why the provided solution did not work, but i have
not received an answer after 3 days or so.  I am losing time to get a
response, before i need to look into other avenues.

I am still hopefully for a correct answer, but the above answer is
worse then my original solution.