finding a character in a pattern in regular expression - regex

Question

I am trying to find all occurances of equals within quotes in a string
If my input string is:
anything='', bob2='age=24, sex=M', dilan=24, noble1='yellow'
I wish to find my characters as follows
anything='', bob2='age=24, sex=M', dilan=24, nobel1=24
^ ^
Followed by replacing it as
anything='', bob2='age~24, sex~M', dilan=24, nobel1=24
^ ^
I tried the following to find all the occurances
'[^',].+?'
But that didnt work.

Answer 1

It's quite difficult to implement your requirement just by regex.
I'd like to iterate the String char by char to implement it.
Please check the code below. I have put the comment inside it. I'm using Java but you can utilize the algorithm inside it.
public class Main {
public static void main(String args[]){
String input = "param1='', param2='age<b>=</b>24, sex<b>=</b>M', param3=24, param4='yellow'";
char[] arr = input.toCharArray();
boolean close = true;
/**
* Iterate the char array
*/
for(int i = 0;i < arr.length;i++){
if(arr[i] == '\''){
/**
* Ignore the escaped ' char in ''
*/
if(i > 0 && arr[i - 1] == '\\'){
break;
}
/**
* Use close to check whether equal sign is inside the ''
*/
if(close){
close = false;
}else{
close = true;
}
}else if(arr[i] == '='){
if(!close){
arr[i] = '~';
}
}
System.out.print(arr[i]);
}
}
}

Answer 2

Try this:
(?<!param[\d+])=
And replace by this:
~
Breakdown:
it will look for any '=' and will see if that precedes by param[\d+] or not..
if not preceded by param\d+ then it will capture the = sign.
That = will be replaced by ~
Explanation

Answer 3

You can use the groups to do that with regex.
Try this code:
(?<=age)(\=)(\S+\s\w+)(\=)
Then, substitute the 1st and 3rd group with ~, and keep the 2nd group intact: ~$2~
Demo: https://regex101.com/r/qxR9ty/1
Update
You can first use Negative Lookbehind as suggested by #Maverick_Mrt, and then cancel whatever category you want to exclude by adding | e.g. cat1|cat2
(?<!app|policy_name|dvc_host|sender|sal)\=
Demo: https://regex101.com/r/qxR9ty/