Regex: Find ampersands but ignore HTML entities

Hi,

I'm trying to write/find a regular expression for finding ampersands but not HTML entites

I have this which finds entities but can't quite figure out how to ignore entities and return unmatched "&"

Code:

---

&[^\s]*;

---

Test string:

Code:

---

This is sample test containing a bunch of & and entities. Do you shop at: M&S? &x#1234;

---

I want to html encode the non-entity ampersands e.g.
"bunch of & and" --> "bunch of & and"

Any help will be greatly appreciated

Cheers Al

Could you just look for ampersands with whitespace after them? E.g. pattern = "& " and replace with "& ".

Samba,

Thanks for your reply, yes I guess that's an option but I was looking for something a little more bullet proof.

An option might be to surround any fields that might contain non-standard characters or & with the

Code:

---

<![CData[

---

tag?

Al