Search for all files not containing a string in VS Code

Question

In Visual Studio Code, using the search capability, how can I search for all files that do not contain a certain string? In this case - "OnPush"

@WiktorStribiżew when I enable Regex and try that, as well as other possible regex solutions, VS code responds with "Expression Matches Everything" — Craig Smitham, Jul 11 '18 at 23:16
May want to check info on the regex flavor first https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42179046/what-flavor-of-regex-does-visual-studio-code-use — , Jul 11 '18 at 23:33

Sheshank S. · Answer 1 · 2018-07-12T01:25:35.007

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In general regex, to search for anything that does not contain a certain string, you do stringbefore(?!string) That is a negative lookahead, it says that only match if whatever you specify as string is not present. In your case it would be something like [\W\w]+(?!OnPush)

But, Negative Lookaheads aren't supported in VS Code Search... So you can't do much.

edited Jul 12 '18 at 01:25

answered Jul 11 '18 at 23:16

Sheshank S.

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Try now. I'm downloading VS code right now will test there – Sheshank S. Jul 11 '18 at 23:40
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Negative look-ahead isn't supported in VS Code search: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/30735 – jabacchetta Jul 12 '18 at 01:23
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You need to enable "search.usePCRE2" in VS Code to use negative look-ahead. – Ali Yousuf Mar 15 '19 at 19:54
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You don't need to ensable the `PCRE2` setting anymore - in fact it is deprecated. Vscode will use PCRE2 as a fallback automatically now. – Mark Oct 21 '19 at 20:50
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VSCode (v 1.50.1) Search works. e.g search for a comma not followed by whitespace `,(?!\s)`. – s3c Nov 03 '20 at 12:55

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 21 '19 at 17:45

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There is a VS Code extension called Reverse Search It can find files that do not contain a specific string

answered Oct 21 '19 at 17:45

Danish Sarwar

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Is it possible to search only in specific folder and in specific files like .php? – Ivan Topić Jan 13 '20 at 10:19
@IvanTopić yes, you can include or exclude files using this extension. – Danish Sarwar Feb 25 '20 at 04:50

Search for all files *not* containing a string in VS Code

2 Answers2

Search for all files not containing a string in VS Code