Regex help

[Pig]

I need to look to see if it appears in a page, but not count its appearance in the page footer. How can I match a word, and specify not to match if it contains certain surrounding text?

EG: I want to match "foo", but not when the match is "only by foo".

I tried a few derivations of /[^{only by]} (f|F)oo/, but if the last letter of the previous word matches any of those letters, it doesn't work.

TIA

[bpat1434]

Not sure what you're getting at. I mean, you can use this in your regex:

"/\bfoo\b/i"

which will match only the word "foo" (or "Foo"). Will not match "aFoo" or "Fool".

Not sure if that's what you're looking for or not.

~Brett

[Pig]

That's not quite what I am after. I am not trying to check if there are characters immediately surrounding the word. I want to exclude matches where the word appears in a known sentence. Example, I want to find "bob", but not if it appears as "I like bob".

[Weedpacket]

You want negative assertions....
/(?<!only by )foo/ will only match "foo" if it is not preceded by "only by ".

[Pig]

That is exactly what I needed! Thank you!