[regex] Nginx location "not equal to" regex

How do I set a location condition in Nginx that responds to anything that isn't equal to the listed locations?

I tried:

location !~/(dir1|file2\.php) {
   rewrite ^/(.*) http://example.com/$1 permanent;
}

But it doesn't trigger the redirect. It simply handles the requested URI using the rules in the rest of the server configuration.

i was looking for the same. and found this solution.

Use negative regex assertion:

location ~ ^/(?!(favicon\.ico|resources|robots\.txt)) { 
.... # your stuff 
} 

Source Negated Regular Expressions in location

Explanation of Regex :

If URL does not match any of the following path

example.com/favicon.ico
example.com/resources
example.com/robots.txt

Then it will go inside that location block and will process it.