Negative forecast always returns true

Question

I am using this regex

/(?!results)/i

As I understand it, it will match any line that does not contain the word "result". However, when I try

/(?!results)/i.test('basketball results')

it returns true

. How do I match strings that don't contain words results

?

+3

Michelle May 02 '15 at 14:58

2 answers

You can use the simple one indexOf

here. It will return -1

if the substring is not contained in the string and is zero or greater:

"basketball results".indexOf('results') == -1

+1

TimWolla 02 May '15 at 15:01

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-02T14:59:50+0000

This regex matches every position without results

following it. See demo .

To match an expression that doesn't contain results

you need to use ^(?!.*results.*$).*

. See another demo .