Regular expression question : how to not match a word

[linq936]

Hi,
I want to use regular expression to match a pattern which does not
have a whole word, let us say the word is "trash", then I tried this
pattern, [^trash], but it does not work. It sort of makes sense that
this does not work in that it does not treat "trash" as a whole word.

Any idea how to make it?

Thanks.

 

[J. Gleixner]

Hi,
I want to use regular expression to match a pattern which does not
have a whole word, let us say the word is "trash", then I tried this
pattern, [^trash], but it does not work. It sort of makes sense that
this does not work in that it does not treat "trash" as a whole word.

Give the documentation a try. This is right out of perlretut:

"... The sense of the match can be reversed by using !~ operator:

if ("Hello World" !~ /World/) {
print "It doesn't match\n";
}
else {
print "It matches\n";
}

"

 

[Paul Lalli]

I want to use regular expression to match a pattern which does not
have a whole word, let us say the word is "trash", then I tried this
pattern, [^trash], but it does not work.

Can you explain what made you think that might work?

That chunk will match any ONE character that is NOT a t, an r, an s, or
an h.

Any idea how to make it?

The same way that's been recommended in this group aproximately 20
times in the past year. Please do a minimal amount of searching before
posting. Search for terms like "negative match", for example.

Paul Lalli

 

[Xicheng]

Hi,
I want to use regular expression to match a pattern which does not
have a whole word, let us say the word is "trash", then I tried this
pattern, [^trash], but it does not work. It sort of makes sense that
this does not work in that it does not treat "trash" as a whole word.

that "[]" stuff matches a single char from the character class, not a
whole word. you should take a look at negative look ahead (?!trash) or
negative look behind(?<!trash) assertions.

Xicheng

 

[batista]

I want to use regular expression to match a pattern which does not

have a whole word, ...

If I understand you well you are looking for something like this:

@arr = qw(Use the force, Luke);
$pattern = "uke";
foreach $word (@arr){
if( $word =~ m/$pattern/ && $word ne $pattern){
print "Find pattern match, but it's not the whole word!\n";
}
}