REGEX - Need a way of negative lookbehind'ing multiple strings - regex

Question

I am trying to match unwanted regions in filenames to delete the files.
I want to get any match if the REGEX finds a "bad region" (Brazil or Columbia) BUT not if they are mixed in with "good regions" in the same bracket (USA, UK, Europe, Australia).
I have a regex of
(?<![( ](USA)[,)])[( ](Brazil|Columbia)[,)](?![( ](USA|UK|Europe|Australia)[,)])
FIFA Soccer (USA, Brazil) <<< DON't MATCH IF USA IS IN SAME BRACKET BEFORE
FIFA Soccer (Brazil, USA) <<< DON't MATCH IF USA IS IN SAME BRACKET AFTER
FIFA Soccer (Brazil) <<< MATCH
FIFA Soccer (Brazil, Ireland) <<< MATCH
FIFA Soccer (Moon, Brazil) <<< MATCH
So far the correct lines match, but that's because I have a fixed-width "negative lookbehind" looking for "USA"...... but I also want "UK" "Europe" and "Australia" in my negative lookbehinds, and I can't do that as they have to be "fixed width"...
FIFA Soccer (UK, Brazil) <<< ERROR - THIS ONE SHOULDN'T MATCH AND DOES
FIFA Soccer (Brazil, UK) <<< This one works (no match) because I have my lookahead set up
See the live demo:
Here
So is there a way of getting in effect somehing like (?<![( ](USA|UK|Europe|Australia)[,)]) at the start of the REGEX to unmatch things like UK, Brazil and Europe, Brazil.

Answer 1

You may use
\((?!(?:[^()]*,\s*)?(?:USA|UK|Europe|Australia)\s*[,)])[^()]*\)
See the regex demo
Details
\( - a ( char
(?!(?:[^()]*,\s*)?(?:USA|UK|Europe|Australia)\s*[,)]) - a negative lookahead that will fail the match if, immediately to the right, there is
(?:[^()]*,\s*)? - an optional sequence of
[^()]* - 0+ chars other than ( and )
, - a comma
\s* - 0+ whitespaces
(?:USA|UK|Europe|Australia) - one of the good values
\s* - 0+ whitespaces
[,)] - a , or )
[^()]* - 0 or more chars other than ( and )
\) - a ) char.

Answer 2

Instead of variable length negative lookbehind, you may use PCRE verbs (*SKIP)(*F) in alternation to match and reject a match:
(?:USA|UK|Europe|Australia),\h*(?:Brazil|Austria)[,)](*SKIP)(*F)|(?:Brazil|Austria)[,)](?!\h?(?:USA|UK|Europe|Australia)[,)])
Updated RegEx Demo
(*FAIL) behaves like a failing negative assertion and is a synonym for (?!)
(*SKIP) defines a point beyond which the regex engine is not allowed to backtrack when the subpattern fails later
(*SKIP)(*FAIL) together provide a nice alternative of restriction that you cannot have a variable length lookbehind in above regex.
You may use DEFINE verb in PCRE to avoid repetitions in your regex like this:
/
(?(DEFINE) # use define to avoid repetitions
(?<ct>USA|UK|Europe|Australia) # disallow countries
(?<mct>Brazil|Austria) # matching countries
)
# main regex starts here
(?&ct),\h*(?&mct)[,)](*SKIP)(*F)
|
(?&mct)[,)](?!\h?(?&ct)[,)])
/x
RegEx Demo 2

Answer 3

Using a pattern to extract country names and array_filter:
$filenames = ['FIFA Soccer (USA, Brazil)',
'FIFA Soccer (Brazil, USA)',
'FIFA Soccer (Brazil)',
'FIFA Soccer (Brazil, Ireland)',
'FIFA Soccer (Moon, Brazil)'];
$bad = ['Brazil', 'Columbia'];
$good = ['USA', 'UK', 'Europe', 'Australia'];
$todelete = array_filter($filenames, function ($i) use ($bad, $good) {
$countries = preg_match_all('~(?:\G(?!\A), |\()\K\pL+~', $i, $m) ? $m[0] : [];
return array_intersect($countries, $bad) && !array_intersect($countries, $good);
});
print_r($todelete);