Regex: how to stop match a url if it fits one pattern

Question

I'm writing a url rewrite regex to find strings having dash between each slash pair, for example,

/aaa-bb/cc/dd-ee-ff/gg

should match aaa-bb and dd-ee-ff. I need it to match nothing if url contains /test/, so for url /aaa-bb/cc/test/dd-ee-ff/gg, it should match nothing. I have written a regex

/\w+-(\w+(?!\.)-?)+

it will find all strings contains -, but I can't add the pattern for the /test/ part.

It is completely unnecessary to put those `\w`s into a character class. — Matt Ball, Apr 02 '12 at 19:24
Try using the pipe `|` operator. More info at http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html — Matthemattics, Apr 02 '12 at 19:24
See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/611883/regex-how-to-match-everything-except-a-particular-pattern — Matt Ball, Apr 02 '12 at 19:25

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 04 '12 at 19:39

Immediately preceding your RewriteRule that contains your regex, add a rewrite condition to exclude urls that contain the substring /test/ anywhere in it. That RewriteCond would look like:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/test/
RewriteRule /\w+-(\w+(?!\.)-?)+ /some_place_else.html?parameters=$1

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 02 '12 at 19:25

1

As far as I know, regex cannot maintain a state, and for that reason you should separate what you're doing into two separate checks, nesting the dash check within the test check.

if(!hasTest) {
  //check for dashes
}

answered Apr 02 '12 at 19:25

Kristian

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It appears that the OP is using `mod_rewrite`, so this is not a viable workaround. – Matt Ball Apr 02 '12 at 19:26
oh sorry, I do use mod_rewrite for tomcat :) – FEi.TH Apr 02 '12 at 19:31
+1. With mod_rewrite, this check can be expressed using [`RewriteCond`](http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.5/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritecond). – ruakh Apr 02 '12 at 19:37

Regex: how to stop match a url if it fits one pattern

2 Answers2