Negation [^]

[^] negates a single character and/or range that is contained within the brackets. Literal characters and ranges can be mixed. If the caret symbol (^) is not placed at the start, the search engine will search for occurrences of the symbol itself. However, the ^ symbol is by default not included in the character set and will not be found. If you want to be able to search on the ^ symbol, please contact support (http://help.zylab.com).

Syntax

Semantics

Recommended Use

[^character(s)]

 

Where one or more characters (preceded by the caret) is placed between two square brackets.

Use it to negate one or more character.

[^character- range]

Where a character range (preceded by the caret) is placed between two square brackets.

Use it to negate a range of characters.

Examples

Example of query

Results

[^abc]

any single character (numbers, letters) other than 'a', 'b', or 'c'. Also, if this single character is part of a hyphenated word. For example 'e-mail'.

[^a-z]

matches any single character (numbers, letters) that is not a letter from 'a' to 'z'.

[^b]pple

'apple', but also '-pple', 'cpple', 'dpple', 'cpple', etc.

[a^bc]

'a', 'b', 'c'. But also, 'c-omputer'.

The ^ sign will not be found because it is not indexed by default. You can change this by adjusting the character set. Please contact http://help.zylab.com

m[^b-y]n

Only 'man' and 'mzn' will give a hit, because the ^ sign excludes the range b-y.

m[a^b-s]n

man, mbn, mcn, mdn, men, mfn, mgn, mhn, min, mjn, mkn, mln, mmn, mnn, mon, mpn, mqn, mrn, msn.