I'm going through a list of files in a directory and I want to take action on some of them based on a regular expression.
How can I find all of the files that...?

1. begin with "PH"
2. followed by any number of any kind of character
3. followed by any characters that are not "H-000" or "I-000"
4. followed by the end of the file name

Here's my regular expression:
/^PH.*?[^(H\-000)(IF\-000)]$/

Notes:

• This works on Perl 5.6.1.
• I'm limited to Perl version 5.004_02.
• If I chomp the input line before checking it with the regular expression, it returns nothing.
• If I take out the negation circumflex (^) in the character class, it returns all of the files, not just the "H-000" and "IF-000" as I expected.
• I can't negate the expression (ie: !/^PH.*?[^H\-000)(IF\-000)]$/) because I'm actually reading the pattern from a configuration file. Everything outside of the slashes is not changeable.

Here's a sample script I was using to try to test it...

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
# patterntest.pl
while (<>) {
    chomp;
    if ( /^PH.*?[(H\-000)(IF\-000)]$/ ) {
        print "{$`}[$&]{$'}\n";
    }
}
[download]

     So, I "ls -1 | patterntest.pl" to test.

Invulnerable. Unlimited XP. Unlimited Votes. I must be...
        GhodMode

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