Regex to match anything but two words

Question

I\'m trying to write a regular expression to match anything that isn\'t \"foo\" and \"bar\". I found how to match anything but one word at Regular expression to match a lin

Answer 1

Answer to the question: "A Regular Expression to match anything that isn't "foo" and "bar"?"

^(?!foo$|bar$).*

would do exactly that.

^      # Start of string
(?!    # Assert that it's impossible to match...
 foo   # foo, followed by
 $     # end of string
|      #
 bar$  # bar, followed by end of string.
)      # End of negative lookahead assertion
.*     # Now match anything

You might need to set RegexOptions.Singleline if your string can contain newlines that you also wish to match.