regex: How do I negate a word?

This should be simple, but for some reason I’m having a pre-Christmas mental block Smiley Wink

Can anyone suggest a regex that matches all paths EXCEPT if it has the string “iwapps” in it?

For example, it should NOT match:
/default/main/Intranet/WORKAREA/dpike/iwapps/index.jsp

But it should match:
/default/main/Intranet/WORKAREA/dpike/iwimages/smitty77_bachelor_party.jpg

I’ve tried ^.*/WORKAREA/[^/]+/[^iwapps]/.*$ but it also NOT matches directories with the characters “i”, ”w”, ”a”, ”p”, or “s” in them.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan Pike
Senior Consultant
Trinity Consulting Group, Inc.
dpike@trinitycg-inc.com

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Comments

Migrateduser

What kind of regular expressions are you asking about? (There are several types.)

In a context that supports Perl extended patterns, you can try a zero-width negative look-ahead assertion. Ex. (?!iwapps)

[^iwapps] does not work because it defines a character class.

Brinko Kobrin
Interwoven Staff Engineer

Migrateduser

Hey Dan, if you are trying to do this in an OpenDeploy context with the ExcludePath attribute, and lookahead is not an option (because Interwoven decided to use different flavors of regex pretty much every place they offer regex) I have a solution for you that might work. However in the more recent versions of OpenDeploy there is an IncludePath or something like that which should negate having to write such complex regex's. If you are working in a perl context where you do have lookahead available, check out the Mastering Regular Expressions book (O'Reilly) and it will give you some good ideas on how to use it.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Hi Dave & Brinko,

Thanks for replying. I forgot to post how I was applying this regex. My apologies...

Actually, this is a regex filter that'll goes in the iw.cfg having to do with event logging. I currently have the following:

log_createfse=on
createfse_filter=".*/Intranet/.*"

But I need to refine this regex to ignore paths that have the "iwapps" directory in it. I'm not quite sure how to use a negative lookahead here.

Dan Pike
Senior Consultant
Trinity Consulting Group, Inc.
dpike@trinitycg-inc.com

Migrateduser

Good luck - I don't think this application of regex is perl, but I'm sure someone from Interwoven will chime in. I'll give you my nasty regex from OpenDeploy that will exclude *.jhtml but not index.jhtml

regex="(^|.*\/)(i.{1,3}|i[^\/]{5,}|i([^n][^d][^e][^x]\.)[^\/]*|[^i\/][^\/]*)\.jhtml$"

Maybe that will help you - it's a beast.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

nipper

THe other thing you can do, since you are working with a trigger, is in the trigger, the first line:

if ($vpath =~ m/iwapps/) {exit}

Not as elegant as not running the trigger at all, but since this is only run on the create FSE event, it should not be horrible.

Andy

Migrateduser

Dave - That regex is quite a doozie. I'm reasonably sure that I suffered an aneurysm trying to decipher it. My attorney will be contacting you Smiley Wink

I'll see if I can apply it.

Andy - Good suggestion...and that's currently what my triggered script does. I just may be stuck doing it that way. My script is running into some "timing" issues, which lead me to look for ways to streamline things (e.g., reduce what events are logged in iwevents).

Dan Pike
Senior Consultant
Trinity Consulting Group, Inc.
dpike@trinitycg-inc.com

cliff1

Negation of strings is very odd in regex. Most of the older regex engines don't support it. Perl regex and the engines that are "perl like" (e.g., pcre) do support negation. Try using something like (?!iwapps). I know that ^(?!foo_) will match all strings that do not begin with "foo_".

-Cliff