Regex select lines that contain more n occurence of a character -

data:

hello 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 hello 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 hello 1 2 3 4 5  hello 1 2 3 4 5 

i know [ ]{n,} works preceding characters only.

you use like:

(?: [^ ]*){n} 

would match space followed 0 or more non-space characters n times. don't need check more n, because if contains n+1 spaces must contain n.

if want count whitespace characters you'd need:

(?:\s\s*){n}