"NOT" operator for MATCH in Neo4j

Question

In Neo4j 2.x, it is easy to find all nodes with a certain value for a given property using Cypher 2.0, like so:

MATCH (node {property: 'value'}) 
RETURN node;

However, how would I find all nodes with any value for property except for "value"? I tried using the NOT operator like so, but this simply returns a syntax error:

MATCH (node {property: NOT 'value'}) 
RETURN node;

Answer 1

The concise syntax for properties in the MATCH clause only works with exact matches.

If you want to do any other kind of match condition, you should the WHERE clause:

MATCH (node)
WHERE node.property <> 'value'
RETURN node;

Another example:

MATCH (node)
WHERE NOT node.property IN ["red", "blue", "yellow"]
RETURN node;

Please note this will do an entire graph scan, which is strongly discouraged. On any reasonable dataset size, this query might not complete or at least not in a timely fashion.