title: Javascript Regex to ignore first character in match
body: <p>I need to ignore a '.' at the start of my regular expression, and have been somewhat stumped. </p>
  
  <p>My current regex is: </p>
  
  <pre class="lang-none prettyprint-override"><code>(?::)(\d{3})
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which matches the following:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/AbISF.png" alt="Image here"></p>
  
  <p>When I try to ignore the '.' with the following regex:</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-none prettyprint-override"><code>[^.](?::)(\d{3})
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get this:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/s8OUI.png" alt="Picture here"></p>
  
  <p>As it seems to be adding the extra character like '&lt;', which is unwanted. </p>
  
  <p>How do I go about to ignore that extra character in front of the ':' ? </p>