[problem]
You want to find a line, not matching the pattern.
[/problem]
[solution]
I find this invaluable whilst editing crons. Or in vi – like this: [^x] where x equals the character you want to ignore.
[/solution]
[example]
For example after performing a crontab -e, wanting to skip comments.
crontab -e
/^[^#]
Also with sed – substituting tags, etc:
sed 's#]*>##g' filename
This says edit your crontab, match the next line that has a beginning, immediately followed by a character that is not a comment.
After performing this once, just type n – for the next match (i.e. next line that does not start with a comment).
[/example]
[reference]
[tags]UNIX, vi, regular expression, Unix Coding School[/tags]
[/reference]
If you have found my website useful, please consider buying me a coffee below 😉