Vim: How do I search for a word which is not followed by another word?

Question

Pretty basic question, I'm trying to write a regex in Vim to match any phrase starting with "abc " directly followed by anything other than "defg".

I've used "[^defg]" to match any single character other than d, e, f or g.

My first instinct was to try /abc [^\(defg\)] or /abc [^\<defg\>] but neither one of those works.

Answer 1

Here's the search string.

/abc \(defg\)\@!

The concept you're looking for is called a negative look-ahead assertion. Try this in vim for more info:

:help \@!