I'm not sure I'm reading your question right, but you're wondering why [^(abc)] doesn't match the string abc?

The square brackets enclose an expression that will match one character. The construct you show will match anything other than (, ), a, b, or c. I think that's what your description is trying to say.

You can get the effect you want in Perl newer than 5.6.1 with a lookbehind assertion: print if /(?<!abc) nevermind/There are other ways to do it, using $PREMATCH, but this will work for fixed strings. More information at perlre, the section about lookbehind.</code>

That is, if I read your question correctly....

In reply to Re: stupid question about regexp - not matching a word by VSarkiss
in thread stupid question about regexp - not matching a word by Anonymous Monk

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