java - Regex match for a character without previous character

I have the following String:

"location-string:location-string:location-C?:\string"

which I would like to split into the following three Strings:

location-string location-string location-C?:\string

What should the regex expression be when using String.split(regex)?

Basically, I want to split on colon ':' characters except those that are preceded by a '?' character!

Thanks in advance,
PM.

Answer

You could use negative lookbehind. It matches the colon which was not preceeded by ?

(?

Java regex would be,

"(?

DEMO