How to loosely match words in between with exception using Spacy Matcher

Question

The code I have is

from spacy.matcher import Matcher
matcher = Matcher(nlp.vocab, validate=True)
pattern = [{'LOWER': 'play'},
           {'OP': '*'}, {'OP': '!', 'LOWER': 'store'},
           {'LOWER': {'IN': ["game", "pacman"]}}
           ]
matcher.add('HUNTING', None, pattern)

def extract_patterns(nlp_doc, matcher):
    result_spans = []
    matches = matcher(nlp_doc)
    print("matches:", len(matches))
    for match_id, start, end in matches:
        span = nlp_doc[start:end]
        result_spans.append(span)
    return result_spans

text = ('play store game. \n play with pacman') 
doc = nlp(text)
extract_patterns(doc, matcher=matcher)

The return result of the above code is the following.

[play with pacman, play store game. 
 play with pacman]

But the expected result is [play with pacman]

Is it possible to do with Spacy Matcher?

Answer 1

You can try with the pattern like this

pattern = [{'LOWER': 'play'},
           {'LOWER': {'NOT_IN': ["store"]}, 'OP': '*'},
           {'LOWER': {'IN': ["game", "pacman"]}}
           ]

This would give only 'play tennis with pacman' and not 'play tennis store with pacman'