How do I query_posts in cat=1 AND not in cat=2

Question

Let's say I have 3 categories, College (cat=1), Corporate (cat=2), and Idea of the Week (cat=3)

There is a home page for College and a home page for Corporate.

On the College home page, in one section I want to show recent post that is in College but not not in Idea of the Week.

My initial attempt:

<?php query_posts( 'cat=1&cat=-3' ); the_post(); ?>'

but this appears to pull post found in EITHER cat 1 OR cat 3.

Same home page, in a second section I want to show recent post that is in College AND in Idea of the Week.

I'm using:

<?php query_posts( array( 'category__and' => array(1,3), 'posts_per_page=1&orderby=date&order=DESC' )); the_post(); ?>

This seems to work as needed. Is there a similar 'category_and_not' function that I can use for the first query?

Answer 1

First, never use query_posts, use WP_Query for additional queries, or pre_get_posts to alter the main query.

Refer to WP_Query in Codex for a complete list of available arguments. You want to use category__not_in in this case:

$args = array(
    'category__in' => array(1),
    'category__not_in' => array(2)
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );