TODO sample works perfectly but I am trying to highlight other text and can't get it?

[JimNayzium]

Here is what I have put in, as well as dozens of other versions of the same thing.
I am trying to select in my code any time there is a ! logic operand, like
if (!$phpVar) {
would grab the (! all the way through the ) is what I want.

I guess my 52 year old eyes just never see the opening ! in those little statements and I am trying to mark them better with some bold etc...

Any ideas why all your samples you provided work perfectly, and I can even alter the text and restart vscode and make it work for other text like TODO_TEST type thing.

But cannot figure out how to make it grab the (! ... )
THANKS!

Also, a regex in vscode search box for (!.*?) does indeed find all my occurences and selects the range I am hoping to highlight. So I thought double escaping would do the trick... but it does not.

"highlight.regexes": { "\\(!.*?\\)": { "filterFileRegex": ".*(?<!CHANGELOG.md)$", "decorations": [ { "overviewRulerColor": "#ffcc00", "backgroundColor": "#ffcc00", "color": "#1f1f1f", "fontWeight": "bold" }, { "backgroundColor": "#ffcc00", "color": "#1f1f1f" } ] },

[sapegin]

Doesn't exactly answer your question, but I have a similar issue with often missing ! so I created a theme that renders operators (including the !) in bold:

[abs-lme]

Same for me. The setting highlight.regexes does not seem to work at all.