Question

How can I exclude a name from a list using a regular expression?

Data:

$subject=
"Damon Carson Stovall,
Bret Roman Mikulak,
Jack Filiberto Quirke,
Elroy Forrest Jarnagin,
Ulysses Wiley Cregger,
Brent Greg Jonah,
Bret Armand Daylong,
Ned Numbers Vandell,
Bret Alden Cutlip,
Bret Chung Markie,";

Regular expression:

// Select anyone with the first name of Bret
$pattern = "/Bret /";

My current solution:

// Loop through & Skip any line that matches Bret.
$subject_array = explode(",",$subject);

foreach($subject_array as $line)
  if(!preg_match($pattern, $line))
    echo "$line<br>";

Answer 1

Yes,you can select lines that do not have Bret as it’s name

/^(?!Bret\b).*$/im

---

i is an ignore case option

m is a multiline option

^ depicts start of the string

\b depicts a non word boundary

(?!Bret\b) is a negative lookahead

So ^(?!Bret\b).*$ would select .* a string only if the lookahead is true…i.e if the string doesn’t start with Bret!