javascript regex - look behind alternative?

^(?!filename).+\.js works for me

tested against:

• test.js match
• blabla.js match
• filename.js no match

A proper explanation for this regex can be found at Regular expression to match string not containing a word?

Look ahead is available since version 1.5 of javascript and is supported by all major browsers

Updated to match filename2.js and 2filename.js but not filename.js

(^(?!filename\.js$).).+\.js

EDIT: From ECMAScript 2018 onwards, lookbehind assertions (even unbounded) are supported natively.

In previous versions, you can do this:

^(?:(?!filename\.js$).)*\.js$

This does explicitly what the lookbehind expression is doing implicitly: check each character of the string if the lookbehind expression plus the regex after it will not match, and only then allow that character to match.

^                 # Start of string
(?:               # Try to match the following:
 (?!              # First assert that we can't match the following:
  filename\.js    # filename.js 
  $               # and end-of-string
 )                # End of negative lookahead
 .                # Match any character
)*                # Repeat as needed
\.js              # Match .js
$                 # End of string

Another edit:

It pains me to say (especially since this answer has been upvoted so much) that there is a far easier way to accomplish this goal. There is no need to check the lookahead at every character:

^(?!.*filename\.js$).*\.js$

works just as well:

^                 # Start of string
(?!               # Assert that we can't match the following:
 .*               # any string, 
  filename\.js    # followed by filename.js
  $               # and end-of-string
)                 # End of negative lookahead
.*                # Match any string
\.js              # Match .js
$                 # End of string