php - Regex for a period not immediatly following a word in a list, without variable length lookbehind? -

i'm trying write regex matches periods not followiing word list.

i believe need lookahead or lookbehind assertion this, , i've tried:

/(?!(mr|ms|mrs))\./u , /(?!(mr|ms|mrs)\.)\./u

these both matches all periods it's not excluding periods after words.

i tried lookbehind, believe need:

/(?<!(mr|ms|mrs))\./u

but looks have fixed length because won't compile: preg_replace(): compilation failed: lookbehind assertion not fixed length @ offset 15.

here's few test cases, , expected result when using preg replace remove matches:

'mr. tom a. suggins'     // mr. tom suggins 'mrs.. jane p suggins, jr.'   // mrs. jane p suggins, jr '.ms.. .jane p. suggins' // ms. jane p suggins

is there way in php without variable length lookbehind support?

you can use (*skip)(*f) verbs in pcre regex fail/skip selected matches;

$repl = preg_replace('/(?:mrs?|ms)\.(*skip)(*f)|\./', '', $str);

test