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Problem

I tried to implement a negative lookahead when searching a file with locate like this:

locate --regex "apple(?!t)"

However I'm getting the following error, because there seems to be some substitution going on:

locate: invalid regexp `apple(?touch latex_preamble.tex)': Invalid preceding regular expression

How can I make this work? I tried apple(?!t) and apple(?!t) as well.

NOTE: I'm aware I can do this with:

locate apple | grep -v applet

but I would like to know how I can get the regular expression to work.

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There are several implementations of locate, and the ones I'm aware of want either POSIX extended regexps, or POSIX basic regexps. Neither support lookaheads.

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  • Thank you! In that case I'll have to resort to grep. Commented Jul 17, 2015 at 16:23

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