Perl Regex "Not" (negative lookahead)

perl, regex, regex-lookarounds

Solution

You can use a negative lookahead (documented under "Extended Patterns" in perlre):

/^\/(?!bob\/)/

Problem

I'm not terribly certain what the correct wording for this type of regex would be, but basically what I'm trying to do is match any string that starts with "/" but is not followed by "bob/", as an example. So these would match: ``` /tom/ /tim/ /steve ``` But these would not ``` tom tim /bob/ ``` I'm sure the answer is terribly simple, but I had a difficult time searching for "regex not" anywhere. I'm sure there is a fancier word for what I want that would pull good results, but I'm not sure what it would be. Edit: I've changed the title to indicate the correct name for what I was looking for

Original source