How can I match strings that don't match a particular pattern in Perl?

Question

I know that it is easy to match anything except a given character using a regular expression.

$text = \"ab ac ad\";
$text =~ s/[^c]*//g; # Match anything, except         


        

Answer 1

The following solves the question as understood in the second sense described in Bart K. comment:

>> $text='ab ac ad';
>> $text =~ s/(ac)|./\1/g;
>> print $text;
ac

Also, 'abacadac' -> 'acac'

It should be noted though that in most practical applications negative lookaheads prove to be more useful than this approach.