Find lines in Visual Studio which are not comments

Question

How to use Visual Studio "Find in Files" tool window to find ALL lines having a certain phrase in them but filter by NON-comment lines at the same time?

There must be a regular expression? Or a link to the regexp help?

Answer 1

Select "Use Regular Expressions" in the "Find in Files" window and enter the following phrase in the search box:

^(?!(\s*/+)).*phrase

If you want the phrase to stay as a single word:

^(?!(\s*/+)).*\s+phrase\s+

Regarding the help: in regexp mode there is a small button next to the search box: [(a)+] It opens a short list with common regexp commands. At the end of that list there is a link to the msdn documentation.