python - Negative lookahead not working after character range with plus quantifier

Question

I am trying to implement a regex which includes all the strings which have any number of words but cannot be followed by a : and ignore the match if it does. I decided to use a negative look ahead for it.

/([a-zA-Z]+)(?!:)/gm
string: lame:joker

since i am using a character range it is matching one character at a time and only ignoring the last character before the : . How do i ignore the entire match in this case?

Link to regex101: https://regex101.com/r/DlEmC9/1

Answer 1

Do a word boundary check after the + to require it to get to the end of the word.

([a-zA-Z]+)(?!:)

Here's an example run.