<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">Following up on my own post. the following _does_ work:</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> if (/^(?!normal)/) {</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> print "not normal\n";</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> } else {</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> print "normal\n";</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> }</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">The important things to note are:</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">I had to have something in front of the negative lookahead (hence the '^')</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">but I had originally tried binding to both the front and the back,<br>but that didn't work.</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">To summarize:</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/(?!normal)/ doesn't work, probably because you can't do a lookahead<br>
without defining what to 'lookahead after'<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"></span><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/^(?!normal)/ works (Yippee)</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">/^(?!normal)$/ doesn't work ;-/<br><br>Here was my sample harness for testing:<br><br>#!/usr/bin/perl</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">sub xxx {</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> $_ = shift;</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> print "'$_' --> ";</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> if (/^(?!normal)/) {</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> print "not normal\n";</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> } else {</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> print "normal\n";</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"> }</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">}</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">xxx ("disconnected-unknown");</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">xxx ("disconnected-timed-out");</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">xxx ("disconnected-empty-response");</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">xxx ("disconnected-bad-gw-status");</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">xxx ("connected-1st-login");</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">
<span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">xxx ("connected-nth-login");</span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"><span style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">xxx ("normal");<br>
<br><br>and the result I wanted to see:<br><br>'disconnected-unknown' --> not normal<br>'disconnected-timed-out' --> not normal<br>'disconnected-empty-response' --> not normal<br>'disconnected-bad-gw-status' --> not normal<br>
'connected-1st-login' --> not normal<br>'connected-nth-login' --> not normal<br>'normal' --> normal<br><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;"></span><br style="font-family: courier new,monospace;">