@maurizio.s It's still just a regex and not an AND condition.
The way that gets interpreted is as `priv| cable` which means it will include any line that contains either "priv" or " cable" (with the leading space), which is why it appeared to work for that specific combination with that device's configuration at that time.
The entire line after the include, section, or exclude directive is interpreted as one big regex in which any non-leading and non-trailing whitespace is respected (you can make leading and trailing whitespace match by surrounding an expression or sub-expression with parentheses).
Any additional pipe characters represent a regex OR (substitution) directive, meaning it can take the sub-expression that's on the left or the right of it. I will include an example that can be tested on any device at the end.
However, that points out an important concept: Since you can include whatever you want in your expression, coming up with a more specific regex that will naturally not include what you don't want is often possible. In this instance, you would have gotten the same output with `show run | i ( cable)`. Had there been any other lines with the sequence " cable" in them, they also would have shown up, even without "priv".
I do not know what specific regex grammar IOS(-X(E|R)) uses, but I'd assume (based on Cisco doing everything in Java) that it's either Java regex or PCRE|PCRE2. It seems to behave similarly to PCRE2, supporting most syntax I've ever tried.
Unfortunately, it does not appear to support negative lookahead/lookbehind, which would allow for exclusions of sub-expressions. It does support some directives containing the question mark, if you enter it properly and use a backslash to escape the parentheses (depending on the expression), but the (?<!) and (?!) (negative lookbehind and negative lookahead, respectively) do not appear to work in any test I've performed, as of IOS-XE 17.12.04b.
Example showing behavior of the suggested expression.
Configuration (using a banner for free-form text entry):
#show run | b banner slip-ppp
banner slip-ppp ^C
privilege something-cable-something
privilege cable-something
privilege something
cable something
cable privilege
cable something
cable privilege
privilegecable
^C
#show run | i priv| cable
privilege something-cable-something
privilege cable-something
privilege something
cable privilege
cable something
cable privilege
privilegecable
(Don't forget to remove the banner with `no banner slip-ppp`)
As you can see, any line that contained "priv" or " cable" was included, as would be expected from a regex like this.
Specifically, the `cable something` (no leading whitespace) line was excluded, since it didn't match either condition.
