Regex: what does (?! ...) mean?

regex negative-lookahead
Nick Heiner picture Nick Heiner · Sep 3, 2009 · Viewed 9.3k times · Source

The following regex finds text between substrings FTW and ODP.

/FTW(((?!FTW|ODP).)+)ODP+/

What does the (?!...) do?

Answer

gnarf picture gnarf · Sep 3, 2009

(?!regex) is a zero-width negative lookahead. It will test the characters at the current cursor position and forward, testing that they do NOT match the supplied regex, and then return the cursor back to where it started.

The whole regexp:

/
 FTW           # Match Characters 'FTW'
 (             # Start Match Group 1
  (             # Start Match Group 2
   (?!FTW|ODP)   # Ensure next characters are NOT 'FTW' or 'ODP', without matching
   .             # Match one character
  )+            # End Match Group 2, Match One or More times
 )             # End Match Group 1
 OD            # Match characters 'OD'
 P+            # Match 'P' One or More times
/

So - Hunt for FTW, then capture while looking for ODP+ to end our string. Also ensure that the data between FTW and ODP+ doesn't contain FTW or ODP

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