Difficulty with string expressions, Regex.Match

[ddx]

Background: Im using Regex.Match and string expressions for string matching.

For instance, if:

String sMatchString = @"SOFT>?(WARE)";

and sString = "SOFTWARE",

then I get oMatch.Length > 0 from:

Match oMatch = Regex.Match(sString, sMatchString);

And oMatch.Length < 0 if sString is anything else such as "SOFTWXRE"


My problem: I want to invert the evaluation of sMatchString . I want oMatch.Length to be > 0 if sString contains at its end anything *except* "WARE". I thought i could simply insert the ! operator like so:

String sMatchString = @"SOFT>?(!WARE)";

so that if sString = "SOFTWXRE" then oMatch.Length would be > 0.

But this does not work.

What is most frustrating is that following prefix approach does work:

String sMatchString = @"(?<!SOFT)WARE";

Suggestions?

 

[ddx]

Oops... small typo above. i meant to write oMatch.Length not Match.Length. I corrected the original post.