character classes are fundamentally the wrong thing for "phrases", since
they describe only a character.
Your current regex (before changing [gm] to ["gm"]) was expressing "from
the start of the string, there's any amount of characters d through z
(but neither g nor m) and then the end of the string", which can be more
easily expressed as "the whole string contains only letters d through z
(but neither g nor m)".
What you apparently want is "the whole string contains only letters d
through z, but never the phrase 'gm'", which - in order to get to a
working regex - we can rephrase as "the whole string contains only
letters d through z and no occurrence of g is followed by an m". Let's
turn that into a regex:
/^ # Require the match to start at the beginning of the
# string so nothing can sneak in before that.
[ # Everything in this group will be matched a bunch
# of times.
| <[d..z]-[g]> # either anything between d and z, with no
# further restrictions, except for g.
| g <!before m> # If there's a g, it must not be followed
# by an m.
]* # end of the group, allow the things in the group to
# occur any amount of times.
$/ # Require the match to end at the end of the string,
# so nothing at the end can sneak in.
Important things to note here:
* <!before m> (spoken as "do not match before an m") will be fine with
occurrences at the end of the string, too.
* we don't remove the m from the character class any more, we only
keep the g in there, because m can be in the string without
restrictions; if there is an m after a g, our regex will already
have failed before it even reaches the m, and all other cases are
fine (like dm or fm or hm).
* you are allowed to put a | not only between things, but also at the
very front. This is allowed in the syntax so that you can line
things up vertically like I did. Think of it as similar to allowing
a , after the last element in a list, like with [1, 2, 3, 4, ]
> hi
> Match: ｢hi｣
> bleh
> Match: Nil
> fog
> Match: ｢fog｣
> dm
> Match: ｢dm｣
> fm
> Match: ｢fm｣
> hm
> Match: ｢hm｣
> gm
> Match: Nil
> rofl
> Match: ｢rofl｣
> dddddddddddg
> Match: ｢dddddddddddg｣
> gggggggggggg
> Match: ｢gggggggggggg｣
> mmmmmmmm
> Match: ｢mmmmmmmm｣
Hope that helps!
- Timo
