Currently, Semgrep does not have a clear way to match the absence of a pattern, rather than the presence of one. However, you can approximate this behavior by matching an entire file withDocumentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.semgrep.dev/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
pattern-regex, and excluding a file that contains the desired content with pattern-not-regex or other negative patterns.
Here is a simple example:
EXAMPLETry this pattern in the Semgrep Playground.
(?s)(.*) uses the s flag to put the match in “single-line” mode, so that the dot character matches a newline. This allows (.*) to match multiple lines, and therefore match an entire file.
If the file contains YOUR PATTERN TO BLOCK, then the match is negated and the file does not appear as a finding. If the file does not contain YOUR PATTERN TO BLOCK, the file is flagged as a finding. With this rule, the finding spans the whole file, starting at line 1.