Excluding multiple items from the selection criteria

Huy, I have 4GL (ver. 6.05) code running on the Informix Online 7.1 Dynamic Server. A screen form has been designed which has ten fields & I am accepting data (which is entered by the users in these fields) using the "CONSTRUCT" statement. One of the fields "old_type" [tpye char(2)] (part of the Construct statement) accepts 2 char values viz "SA", "DR", "MT", "MV", etc. So whenever they need information for say codes "SA" & "DR", they enter SA|DR in the screen field, which internally gets converted (by virtue of the Construct statement) to the following SQL : select * from table where old_type in ('SA','DR'); My question to you is that, if they want info. for codes other than "SA" & "DR" (i.e data for codes excluding these two), what would they have to enter on the screen field, so that internally the select statement would automatically look like : select * from table where old_type not in ('SA','DR'); Note : I tried entering the following on the entry screen field : [^SAMV]* But, this excludes all old_type codes starting with S, A, M & V and not SA & MV. I would deeply appreciate if you could mail me the reply as soon as possible. Thanks for your time. Regards, Suhas Suhas Tembe Email : stembe@arrowshirt.com stembe@msn.com