From: James Moore <jamesthepiper@...>
Date: 2007-11-30T08:06:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Negate a character sequence in a regular expression?

I think this gets you close to where you want to be:

irb(main):045:0> 'cat sheep horse cat tac dog' =~ /cat(?!.*cat)(.*)dog/
=> 16
irb(main):046:0> $1
=> " tac "
irb(main):047:0>

The (?! bit is a nonmatching lookahead.

On Nov 29, 2007 2:07 PM,  <crm_114@mac.com> wrote:
> For the following string:
>
> 'cat sheep horse cat tac dog'
>
> I would like to write a regular expression that matches any substring
> that is prefixed by the word 'cat', is then followed by any characters
> as long as those characters do not comprise the word 'cat', and then
> finally suffixed by the string 'dog'.  Therefore, this expression
> should match the substring 'cat tac dog' in the above string.

I think this gets you closer to where you want to be:

irb(main):045:0> 'cat sheep horse cat tac dog' =~ /cat(?!.*cat)(.*)dog/
=> 16
irb(main):046:0> $1
=> " tac "
irb(main):047:0>

The (?! bit is a nonmatching lookahead.

-- 
James Moore | james@restphone.com
Ruby and Ruby on Rails consulting
blog.restphone.com