Regex with exception of particular words

regex exception word
Agustinus P picture Agustinus P · Dec 1, 2009 · Viewed 35.3k times · Source

I have problem with regex. I need to make regex with an exception of a set of specified words, for example: apple, orange, juice. and given these words, it will match everything except those words above. 

applejuice (match)
yummyjuice (match)
yummy-apple-juice (match)
orangeapplejuice (match)
orange-apple-juice (match)
apple-orange-aple (match)
juice-juice-juice (match)
orange-juice (match)

apple (should not match)
orange (should not match)
juice (should not match)

Answer

MBO picture MBO · Dec 1, 2009

If you really want to do this with a single regular expression, you might find lookaround helpful (especially negative lookahead in this example). Regex written for Ruby (some implementations have different syntax for lookarounds):

rx = /^(?!apple$|orange$|juice$)/

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