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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T11:16:06+00:00

$text_expression = ‘word1 word2 phrase 1 phrase 2 -word3 -word4 -phrase \hello\ 3 -phrase

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$text_expression = 'word1 word2 "phrase 1" "phrase 2" -word3 -word4 -"phrase \"hello\" 3" -"phrase 4"';

i want to search strings that contains (word1 OR word2 OR ‘phrase 1’ OR ‘phrase 2’) AND doesn’t contain (word3 OR word4 OR ‘phrase “hello” 3’ OR ‘phrase 4’)

what would be the regex expression that is equivalent of $text_expression above? which produces an array like;

[contains] => array ( 

[0] => word1 
[1] => word2 
[2] => phrase 1

)
[doesnt contain] => array (

[0] => word3 
[1] => word4 
[2] => phrase "hello" 3

)

ps: I can formulate the string another way if it’s going to make it easier (e.g. use other chars instead of quotes and dashes)

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Negative match with a regular expression is possible, but very complicated. Maybe you want to search for the first part first, and then filter the results with the second part. You “or” regular expressions with |, so look for “word1|word2|phrase 1|phrase 2” first and then remove results that match “word3|word4|phrase “hello” 3|phrase 4″ (escaping the words and phrases before joining with | is probably a good idea).

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