[ILUG] regexp to match anything except a line that starts with something specific

[Paul Dunne]

Caolan asked,

    I'm trying to make a regexp which will match any
    line except a line that starts with "slot:" I've got
    ^([^s]|s[^l]|sl[^o]|slo[^t]|slot[^:]).* which matches any line that
    doesn't have "slot:" in it, but lines that don't start with "slot:"
    but nevertheless contain it are still matched by the regexp. Any
    ideas ? It's got to be a regexp for other constraints.

Well, most if not all programs that interpret regexps have a means of
specifying what you want.  For example, in vi (well, ex strictly speaking):

v/^slot:/

matches anything *except* "beginning of line followed by slot:", which is
what you want.  Doing it purely in regexp is a pain in the arse, but you
shouldn't have to, because perl, sed, and every program I'm aware of that
uses regexps has this feature.

-- 
Paul Dunne | paul at dunne.ie.eu.org | http://dunne.yi.org/