PHP: Regex: Match if doesnt contain

Question

I have two urls (below). I need to match the one that doesn't contain the "story" part in the it. I know i need to use negative lookhead/behind, but i cant for the life of me get it to work

Urls

news/tech/story/2014/oct/28/apple-iphone/261736

news/tech/2014/oct/28/apple-iphone/261736

Current Regex

news\/([a-z0-9-\/]{1,255})(\d{4})\/(\w{3})\/(\d{2})\/([a-z0-9\-]{1,50})\/(\d{1,10})

Example:

http://regex101.com/r/jC7jC4/1

ʰᵈˑ · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-29 13:58:21Z

1

you can try this one :

news\/(([a-z0-9-\/](?!story)){1,255})(\d{4})\/(\w{3})\/(\d{2})\/([a-z0-9\-]{1,50})\/(\d{1,10})

edited Oct 29, 2014 at 13:58

ʰᵈˑ

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answered Oct 29, 2014 at 13:57

jmleroux

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Comments

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-29 13:57:07Z

1

You can use negative lookahead like this:

(?!.*\bstory\b)news\/([a-z0-9-\/]{1,255})(\d{4})\/(\w{3})\/(\d{2})\/([a-z0-9\-]{1,50})\/(\d{1,10})

RegEx Demo

(?!.*\bstory\b) is negative lookahead that will stop match if there is a word story in the URL.

answered Oct 29, 2014 at 13:57

anubhava

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Comments

geoandri · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-29 13:58:03Z

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You can check with strpos() if you don't have to use regex

 if (strpos($url, 'story') === false

answered Oct 29, 2014 at 13:58

geoandri

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1 Comment

TML Over a year ago

Agreed. While negative assertions can do the job, the old saw about having two problems now applies especially well to situations like this, IMO. Future maintainers would thank you if you can pair the regex with some string operations that make the behaviour a little more clear.

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