haha yes thanks @moogey

is it possible to do non capturing regex in emacs?

I’m trying to write a language mode that matches if statement syntax

I need to differentiate between not*if*ication and if(statement) or if (statement)

\\(if\\|else\\)\\(?:[^A-Za-z0-9]\\) this works but captures the (/{ after the if/else keyword

@mikepjb not sure, but https://github.com/joddie/pcre2el could help in discovering it, if it's easier for you to write in PCRE