I didn't say it never works. I know it works for "ted", but it doesn't work for "bil". "bil" doesn't match /bob|fred|bill/ so it should be changed to "HIT".

[^chars] means "something that isn't 'c', 'h', 'a', 'r' or 's'". What you posted doesn't necessarily mean "something that isn't 'bob', 'fred' or 'bill'". (It depends on what bob, fred, bill and more really are.)

Update: Added "necessarily".

In reply to Re^6: Negating a regexp by ikegami
in thread Negating a regexp by jxh

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