Match everything except for specified strings

Question

I know that the following regex will match  red    green   or  blue     red green blue   Is there a straightforward way of making it match everything except several specified strings

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All except word  red    x000D   x000D  var href     text-1   red   text-3   text-4   text-5    x000D   x000D  var test   href replace      b   red b   s S       g  testF    x000D   x000D  function testF match  p1  p2  offset  str full    x000D    p1    -  p1  -   x000D    return p1  x000D    x000D   x000D  console log test   x000D   x000D   x000D    All except word  red    x000D   x000D  var href     text-1   frede   text-3   text-4   text-5    x000D   x000D  var test   href replace       s S       g  testF    x000D   x000D  function testF match  p1  p2  offset  str full    x000D    p1   p1 replace  red g       x000D    p1    -  p1  -   x000D    return p1  x000D    x000D   x000D  console log test   x000D   x000D   x000D

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Matching Anything but Given Strings If you want to match the entire string where you want to match everything but certain strings you can do it like this       red green blue       This says  start the match from the beginning of the string where it cannot start and end with red  green  or blue and match anything else to the end of the string  You can try it here  https   regex101 com r rMbYHz 2 Note that this only works with regex engines that support a negative lookahead

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I had the same question  the solutions proposed were almost working but they had some issue  In the end the regex I used is       red green blue      I tested it in Javascript and  NET      should t be placed inside the negative lookahead  like this        red green blue  or it would make the first element behave different from the rest  i e   anotherred  wouldn t be matched while  anothergreen  would

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Matching any text but those matching a pattern is usually achieved with splitting the string with the regex pattern   Examples    c  - Regex Split text    red green blue   or  to get rid of empty values  Regex Split text    red green blue   Where x   gt   string IsNullOrEmpty x    see demo  vb net - Regex Split text   red green blue   or  to remove empty items  Regex Split text   red green blue   Where Function s  Not String IsNullOrWhitespace s    see demo  or this demo where LINQ is supported  javascript - text split  red green blue    no need to use g modifier here    to get rid of empty values  use text split  red green blue   filter Boolean    see demo java - text split  red green blue    or - to keep all trailing empty items - use text split  red green blue   -1   or to remove all empty items use more code to remove them  see demo  groovy - Similar to Java  text split  red green blue    to get all trailing items use text split  red green blue   -1  and to remove all empty items use text split  red green blue   findAll  it          see demo  kotlin - text split Regex  red green blue    or  to remove blank items  use text split Regex  red green blue    filter   it isBlank      see demo scala - text split  red green blue    or to keep all trailing empty items  use text split  red green blue   -1  and to remove all empty items  use text split  red green blue   filter   nonEmpty   see demo  ruby - text split  red green blue    to get rid of empty values use  split  red green blue   reject  amp  empty    and to get both leading and trailing empty items  use -1 as the second argument   split  red green blue   -1    see demo  perl - my  result1   split  red green blue    text   or with all trailing empty items  my  result2   split  red green blue    text  -1   or without any empty items  my  result3   grep     S    split  red green blue    text   see demo  php - preg split   red green blue     text  or preg split   red green blue     text  -1  PREG SPLIT NO EMPTY  to output no empty items  see demo  python - re split r red green blue   text  or  to remove empty items  list filter None  re split r red green blue   text     see demo  go - Use regexp MustCompile  red green blue   Split text  -1   and if you need to remove empty items  use this code  See Go demo    NOTE  If you patterns contain capturing groups  regex split functions methods may behave differently  also depending on additional options  Please refer to the appropriate split method documentation then

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You don t need negative lookahead  There is working example       s S     red green blue   g   Description      s S  - match any character   - match from 0 to unlimited from previous group   - match as less as possible  red green blue   - match one of this words or nothing g - repeat pattern   Example   whiteredwhiteredgreenbluewhiteredgreenbluewhiteredgreenbluewhiteredgreenbluewhiteredgreenbluewhiteredgreenbluewhiteredgreenbluewhiteredwhiteredwhiteredwhiteredwhiteredwhiteredgreenbluewhiteredwhiteredwhiteredwhiteredwhiteredredgreenredgreenredgreenredgreenredgreenbluewhiteredbluewhiteredbluewhiteredbluewhiteredbluewhiteredwhite  Will be   whitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhitewhite  Test it  regex101 com

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Depends on the language  but there are generally negative-assertions you can put in like so      red green blue     Thanks for the syntax fix  the above is valid Java and Perl  YMMV

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If you want to make sure that the string is neither red  green nor blue  caskey s answer is it   What is often wanted  however  is to make sure that the line does not contain red  green or blue anywhere in it   For that  anchor the regular expression with   and include    in the negative lookahead          red green blue     Also  suppose that you want lines containing the word  engine  but without any of those colors          red green blue    engine   You might think you can factor the    to the head of the regular expression         red green blue engine       Does not work   but you cannot   You have to have both instances of    for it to work

[regex] Match everything except for specified strings

All except word "red"

All except word "red"

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