exclude search strings from vscode search results

Question

I want to search the files having "write" but at the same time I don't want my search results to include "writeful". So if there is

• write
• writeful
• writer
• fwrite
• foowrite
• Write

I want everything but writeful. Basically I need something with or without regex to exclude writeful.

I know one not-so-good-way to do it is search for writeful. And then do next search and exclude the files from previous search results. However it will fail if write and writeful both are present in same file.

Answer 1

You can use negative lookahead in regex to exclude matches. Case sensitivity can be handled as part of regex control flags, though this may be outside the expression itself depending on the tool.

A simple example of allowing regular expression matches for "write" as long as it isn't followed by "ful" is:

write(?!ful)