perl: question about the regex "=~"

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello all

Is there a "not" reversal method for the =~ regex thingy in perl ?

for example, in the snippet below, i have placed a ! in front of the =~ to "not it".. although it quite obviously doesn't work and is just me trying to get across the question in a way that somebody may understand :o

#!/bin/perl -w
my $string = "zfspool/my-server34/john/";

if ( $string !=~ /^.*\/.*\/.*/ ) {
        print "ERROR\n";
        exit 1;
}

In my code I have to test against it failing rather than succeeding... I appreciate people may respond with "use an else statement for the fail condition" , but i really cant do that, even though it makes perfect sense (long story)

so basically - Can I "NOT" a "=~" ?

2 
if ( $string !~ /^.*\/.*\/.*/ )
3

thanks