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Regular expressions - "negating" a matching string

  • 25-06-2007 04:25PM
    #1
    smcelhinney
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,127 ✭✭✭


    I want to search and return files from a filesystem, that DONT contain a particular string. I need a little help.

    My regex sucks, but I assumed that it would be something like !^foo or something like that?

    am I way off?


Comments

  • #2
    marco_polo
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 10,093 Mod ✭✭✭✭marco_polo


    smcelhinney wrote:
    I want to search and return files from a filesystem, that DONT contain a particular string. I need a little help.

    My regex sucks, but I assumed that it would be something like !^foo or something like that?

    am I way off?

    I think [^foo] would work to exclude this string. To the best of my limited knowledge on this subject the square brackets are important. I think ^foo without the brackets would match "foo" only if it occurs at the beginning of a line.


  • #3
    IRLConor
    Subscribers Posts: 4,077 ✭✭✭IRLConor 


    grep -Lr foo dir

    will recursively search the directory dir and print the names of the files which do not match the regex foo.

    What tool/language are you using?

    [^foo] will not do it, that matches a single character which is anything except 'f' or 'o'.


  • #4
    Hobbes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,264 ✭✭✭✭Hobbes


    Something to help you.
    http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/cheat-sheets/regular-expressions-cheat-sheet/


  • #5
    koloughlin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 97 ✭✭koloughlin


    This thread sounds very familiar :)

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055109333


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