[R] negation in grep

orzack orzack at freshpond.org
Mon Jun 22 23:45:02 CEST 2009


Does anybody know how to negate a string in a grep command, i.e., 
what I need is to return only strings that do NOT contain a second 
string anywhere in the entire string.


for

txt <- c("boo","goo","doob","foo","boofoo")

I need a grep command that returns strings with "oo" except when "b" 
is present anywhere. I know that

grep("[^b]oo" would work to exclude "boo" and "boofoo" but not "doob"

So, what I need is

grep("oo + some syntax", txt)

should return

goo doo foo

I have tried

  grep("oo!boo",txt)

but it returns character(0).

any suggestions are much appreciated!

S.
-- 
Steven Orzack




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