Regex - how to match everything except a particular pattern

You could use a look-ahead assertion:

(?!999)\d{3}

This example matches three digits other than 999.

---

But if you happen not to have a regular expression implementation with this feature (see Comparison of Regular Expression Flavors), you probably have to build a regular expression with the basic features on your own.

A compatible regular expression with basic syntax only would be:

[0-8]\d\d|\d[0-8]\d|\d\d[0-8]

This does also match any three digits sequence that is not 999.

If you want to match a word A in a string and not to match a word B. For example: If you have a text:

1. I have a two pets - dog and a cat
2. I have a pet - dog

If you want to search for lines of text that HAVE a dog for a pet and DOESN'T have cat you can use this regular expression:

^(?=.*?\bdog\b)((?!cat).)*$

It will find only second line:

2. I have a pet - dog