How to say any character except dash ("-")

Question

How to do we compose a regex that says "the matches fails if there's a dash somewhere in the middle"

I have several lines that are composed as 3958.3r - 5v and some are without the dash for example: 3958.3v4r. I am able to get the ones with the dash, but not only the ones without the dash

You want to match any string but [*a **string containing specific character***](https://stackoverflow.com/a/37988661/3832970): `^[^-]*$` or `^[^-]+$` (if empty strings are not allowed). — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 09 '18 at 13:06
@HardikShah I need to get first the ones with the dash only, and second the ones without the dash to store them somewhere for example — LiquidSnake, Jul 09 '18 at 13:10

Evan · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-21T12:16:35.007

7

This can be accomplished with a character class negation. ^ at the beginning of a character class simply negates the character class. If you then only have the character -, then you create a character class that matches anything but -.

^[^\-]+$

According to what you have said, you need to put the ^ (start of string) at the front of your pattern, and escape the . or else you will match not only the . after 395[0-9], but any character at all like 3950z.

^395[0-9]\.[^-]+$

edited Jul 21 '20 at 12:16

answered Jul 09 '18 at 13:07

Evan

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It doesn't work unfortunately. I have this regex constructed: `395[0-9].(.*?)^[^\-]+$` – LiquidSnake Jul 09 '18 at 13:08
see edits above – Evan Jul 09 '18 at 13:10
still doesn't work unfortunately – LiquidSnake Jul 09 '18 at 13:11
My bad it worked finally I just misread the output – LiquidSnake Jul 09 '18 at 13:13
If my answer solved your problem, please mark it as the solution for anyone who views this later. Glad I could help. – Evan Jul 09 '18 at 13:16

How to say any character except dash ("-")

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