Regex to not match a string
 

Hello:

I have come up with a scenario where I need to form a regex that does
not match
either of two strings.

For example, I want the regex to match anything besides cat and dog,
horse
should yield a match, pig should yield a match, etc.

I tried this:
[^(cat|dog)]

but that did not work.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Neil

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Re: Regex to not match a string
 

Neil wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I have come up with a scenario where I need to form a regex that does
> not match
> either of two strings.
>
> For example, I want the regex to match anything besides cat and dog,
> horse
> should yield a match, pig should yield a match, etc.
>
> I tried this:
> [^(cat|dog)]
>
> but that did not work.
>
> Any ideas?

(?!cat|dog) should work

The (?!) construct means a negative lookahead: it matches iff the regex
in the group does not match.

--
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth

Re: Regex to not match a string
 

On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:59:31 -0700 (PDT), Neil
<neil@JAMMConsulting.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
who said :

>Hello:
>
>I have come up with a scenario where I need to form a regex that does
>not match
>either of two strings.

One way out is to write a regex to find either string then invert the
boolean result of matches
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method."
~ John von Neumann (born: 1903-12-28 died: 1957-02-08 at age: 53)

Re: Regex to not match a string
 

Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> wrote:
>> I have come up with a scenario where I need to form a regex that does
>> not match either of two strings.
>>
>> For example, I want the regex to match anything besides cat and dog,
>> horse should yield a match, pig should yield a match, etc.
> (?!cat|dog) should work The (?!) construct means a negative lookahead...

There's also a way to construct "conventional" regular expressions, as long
as you can anchor the starting point of the not-occurrance of these words:
e.g.:
^([^cd]|c[^a]|d[^o]|ca[^t]|do[^g])

It quickly becomes messy as the not-to-occurrants become longer, and also
messier (but not so much), if you e.g. still want the catfish to pass the re.


> --
> Beware of bugs ...
heh, I read "Beware of the dogs ..." this time :-)