Re: xsd reg expression for not

oops, mesage sent too soon,

so if you have a pattern that must not start with an A but can then have
many characters use

"[^A].+"

not "this" seems to be rarher clumsily

"[^t][^h][^i][^s].+"

perhaps there is a better way

Colin

"Colin Mackenzie" <> wrote in message
news:bdpnoj$heg$...
> the reg ex for not is the ^ (shift 6 on my PC) charcater
> "Red Ogden" <> wrote in message
> news: om...
> > Please can anyone tell me the regex for Not
> > E.g. I don't want the string to begin with 'this'??
> > Thanks in advance
> > Redge.
>
>

Colin Mackenzie

Many thanks again Colin - as you can no doubt gather I am new to reg
expressions - I see what you mean about being clumsy - is it necessary
to give a range for each letter? And would that mean that the string
could not start with 't'?

Thanks
Redge.

"Colin Mackenzie" <> wrote in message news:<bdpo4j$qtq$>...
> oops, mesage sent too soon,
>
> so if you have a pattern that must not start with an A but can then have
> many characters use
>
> "[^A].+"
>
> not "this" seems to be rarher clumsily
>
> "[^t][^h][^i][^s].+"
>
> perhaps there is a better way
>
> Colin
>
> "Colin Mackenzie" <> wrote in message
> news:bdpnoj$heg$...
> > the reg ex for not is the ^ (shift 6 on my PC) charcater
> > "Red Ogden" <> wrote in message
> > news: om...
> > > Please can anyone tell me the regex for Not
> > > E.g. I don't want the string to begin with 'this'??
> > > Thanks in advance
> > > Redge.
> >
> >

yes, it was clumsy and you are correct in saying that it would not alow
"that" (because of the not "t").

I was stuck so I put a question into the schema dev newsgroup.

The basic answer is that whole strings cannot be negated in the current
version of schema.

Jeni Tennision however did come-up with the following work around however
(Jenni's comments below). I simplified the string to negate to be "STR".
I think you can use:

(([^S].*)|(S[^T].*)|(ST[^R].*))

in other words, the string can start with something that isn't S; or

it can start with S, as long as it's followed by something that isn't

T; or it can start with ST, as long as it's followed by something that

isn't R.

Cheers,

Jeni

---

Jeni Tennison

http://www.jenitennison.com/



"Red Ogden" <> wrote in message
news: om...
> Many thanks again Colin - as you can no doubt gather I am new to reg
> expressions - I see what you mean about being clumsy - is it necessary
> to give a range for each letter? And would that mean that the string
> could not start with 't'?
>
> Thanks
> Redge.
>
> "Colin Mackenzie" <> wrote in message
news:<bdpo4j$qtq$>...
> > oops, mesage sent too soon,
> >
> > so if you have a pattern that must not start with an A but can then have
> > many characters use
> >
> > "[^A].+"
> >
> > not "this" seems to be rarher clumsily
> >
> > "[^t][^h][^i][^s].+"
> >
> > perhaps there is a better way
> >
> > Colin
> >
> > "Colin Mackenzie" <> wrote in message
> > news:bdpnoj$heg$...
> > > the reg ex for not is the ^ (shift 6 on my PC) charcater
> > > "Red Ogden" <> wrote in message
> > > news: om...
> > > > Please can anyone tell me the regex for Not
> > > > E.g. I don't want the string to begin with 'this'??
> > > > Thanks in advance
> > > > Redge.
> > >
> > >

Colin
Many thanks for the further explanation and for Jenni's workaround.
All the best
Redge.