For example, I have these strings

APPLEJUCE1A
APPLETREE2B
APPLECAKE3C
APPLETEA1B
APPLEWINE3B
APPLEWINE1C

I want all of these strings except those that have TEA or WINE1C in them.

APPLEJUCE1A
APPLETREE2B
APPLECAKE3C
APPLEWINE3B

I've already tried the following, but it didn't work:

^APPLE(?!.*(?:TEA|WINE1C)).*$

Any help is appreciated as I'm also kinda new to this.

CodePudding user response：

You can use

^APPLE(?!.*TEA)(?!.*WINE1C).*

See the regex demo.

Details:

• ^ - start of string
• APPLE - a fixed string
• (?!.*TEA) - no TEA allowed anywhere to the right of the current location
• (?!.*WINE1C) - no WINE1C allowed anywhere to the right of the current location
• .* - any zero or more chars other than line break chars as many as possible.

CodePudding user response：

If you don't want to match a string that has both or them (which is not in the current example data):

^APPLE(?!.*(WINE1C|TEA).*(?!\1)(?:TEA|WINE1C)).*

Explanation

• ^ Start of string
• APPLE match literally
• (?! Negative lookahead
  • .*(WINE1C|TEA) Capture either one of the values in group 1
  • .* Match 0 characters
  • (?!\1)(?:TEA|WINE1C) Match either one of the values as long as it is not the same as previously matched in group 1
• ) Close the lookahead
• .* Match the rest of the line

Regex demo

CodePudding user response：

If you indeed have mutliple strings as you claim, there's no need to jam all that in one regex pattern.

/^APPLE/ && !/TEA|WINE1C/

If you have a single string, the best approach is probably to splice it into lines (split /\n/), but you could also use a single regex match too

/^APPLE(?!.*TEA|WINE1C).*/g