PFB the regex. I want to make sure that the regex should not contain any special character just after # and just before. In-between it can allow any combination.
The regex I have now:
#"^[^\W_](?:[\w.-]*[^\W_])?#(([a-zA-Z0-9]+)(\.))([a-zA-Z]{2,3}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$"))"
For example, the regex should not match
abc#.sj.com
abc#-.sj-.com
SSDFF-SAF#-_.SAVAVSAV-_.IP
Since you consider _ special, I'd recommend using [^\W_] at the beginning and then rearrange the starting part a bit. To prevent a special char before a #, just make sure there is a letter or digit there. I also recommend to remove redundant capturing groups/convert them into non-capturing:
#"^[^\W_](?:[\w.-]*[^\W_])?#(?:\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.|(?:[\w-]+\.)+)(?:[a-zA-Z]{2,3}|[0-9]{1,3})\]?$"
Here is a demo of how this regex matches now.
The [^\W_](?:[\w.-]*[^\W_])? matches:
[^\W_] - a digit or a letter only
(?:[\w.-]*[^\W_])? - a 1 or 0 occurrences of:
[\w.-]* - 0+ letters, digits, _, . and -
[^\W_] - a digit or a letter only
Change the initial [\w-\.]+ for [A-Za-z0-9\-\.]+.
Note that this excludes many acceptable email addresses.
Update
As pointed out, [A-Za-z0-9] is not an exact translation of \w. However, you appear to have a specific definition as to what you consider special characters and so it is probably easier for you to define within the square brackets what you class as allowable.
Related
I would like to create a custom regular expression. Which shall track that the first character of a username should be an alphabet.
Followed by alphanumeric or can have maximum one occurrence of a special character (- or _). I can check for username starts with the alphabet with this ^[a-zA-Z]+$ but not sure what to do to check at most one occurrence of a special character. Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks
From what I understood of your post, you want the following to match.
a-afdsafd
aafdsafd
aafdsa_fd
aafdsa-fd
aAfdsa-FD
And the following to not match:
aa-dsa-fd
aa-dsa_fd
-afdsafd
_afdsafd
Try /^[a-z](?:(?![a-z]+[\-_])[\-_])?[a-z]+(?:(?<![a-z]+[\-_])[\-_]?)[a-z]+?$/i
The i modifier enables case-insensitive matching.
The ^ and $ anchors ensure that the entire string matches our regex.
[a-z] checks that the first character is an alphabet.
(?:(?![a-z]+[\-_])[\-_])?) looks ahead to check that there is no "special character" used later and if there is none, we optionally match one special character.
[a-z]+ Match one or more alphabets.
(?:(?<![a-z]+[\-_])[\-_]?) does the same thing as 4 except it looks behind.
[a-z]+? Optionally match one or more alphabets.
https://regexr.com/3t86l
Edit: I noticed that aAfdsaFd_ should also match. The above does not match this. Slightly modifying #Wiktor Stribiżew's comment, ^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*(?:[-_][a-zA-Z0-9]*)?$ seems to work fine with all cases. That's cleaner and more efficient. All credit to #Wiktor Stribiżew.
You could match an upper or lowercase character from the start of the string ^[a-zA-Z], match zero or more times alphanumeric [a-zA-Z0-9]* followed by an optional hyphen or underscore [-_]?.
At the end match zero or more times alphanumeric [a-zA-Z0-9]*$ until the end of the string.
^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*[-_]?[a-zA-Z0-9]*$
I am quite new to regex thing and need regex for first name which satisfies following conditions:
First Name must contain letters only. It may contain spaces, hyphens, or apostrophes.
It must begin with letters.
All other characters and numbers are not valid.
Special characters ‘ and – cannot be together (e.g. John’-s is not allowed)
An alphabet should be present before and after the special characters ‘ and – (e.g. John ‘s is not allowed)
Two consecutive spaces are not allowed (e.g. Annia St is not allowed)
Can anyone help? I tried this ^([a-z]+['-]?[ ]?|[a-z]+['-]?)*?[a-z]$ but it's not working as expected.
Regexes are notoriously difficult to write and maintain.
One technique that I've used over the years is to annotate my regexes by using named capture groups. It's not perfect, but can greatly help with the readability and maintainability of your regex.
Here is a regex that meets your requirements.
^(?<firstchar>(?=[A-Za-z]))((?<alphachars>[A-Za-z])|(?<specialchars>[A-Za-z]['-](?=[A-Za-z]))|(?<spaces> (?=[A-Za-z])))*$
It is split down into the following parts:
1) (?<firstchar>(?=[A-Za-z])) This ensures the first character is an alpha character, upper or lowercase.
2) (?<alphachars>[A-Za-z]) We allow more alpha chars.
3) (?<specialchars>[A-Za-z]['-](?=[A-Za-z])) We allow special characters, but only with an alpha character before and after.
4) (?<spaces> (?=[A-Za-z])) We allow spaces, but only one space, which must be followed by alpha characters.
You should use a testing tool when writing regexes, I'd recommend https://regex101.com/
You can see from the screenshot below how this regex performs.
Take the regex I've given you, run it in https://regex101.com/ with samples you'd like to match against, and tweak it to fit your requirements. Hopefully I've given you enough information to be self sufficient in customising it to your needs.
You can use this link to run the regex https://regex101.com/r/O2wFfi/1/
Edit
I've updated to address the issue in your comment, rather than just give you the code, I will explain the problem and how I fixed it.
For your example "Sam D'Joe", if we run the original regex, the following happens.
^(?<firstchar>[A-Za-z])((?<alphachars>[A-Za-z])|(?<specialchars>[A-Za-z]['-][A-Za-z])|(?<spaces> [A-Za-z]))*$
1) ^ matches the start of the string
2) (?<firstchar>[A-Za-z]) matches the first character
3) (?<alphachars>[A-Za-z]) matches every character up to the space
4) (?<spaces> [A-Za-z]) matches the space and the subsequent alpha char
Matches consume the characters that they match
This is where we run into a problem. Our "specialchars" part of the regex matches an alpha char, our special char and then another alpha char ((?<specialchars>[A-Za-z]['-](?=[A-Za-z]))).
The thing you need to know about regexes, is each time you match a character, that character is then consumed. We've already matched the alpha char before the special character, so our regex will never match.
Each step actually looks like this:
1) ^ matches the start of the string
2) (?<firstchar>[A-Za-z]) matches the first character
3) (?<alphachars>[A-Za-z]) matches every character up to the space
4) (?<spaces> [A-Za-z]) matches the space and the subsequent alpha char
and then we're left with the following
We cannot match this, because one of our rules is "An alphabet should be present before and after the special characters ‘ and –".
Lookahead
Regex has a concept called "lookahead". A lookahead allows you to match a character without consuming it!
The syntax for a lookahead is ?= followed by what you want to match. E.g. ?=[A-Z] would look ahead for a single character that is an uppercase letter.
We can fix our regex, by using lookaheads.
1) ^ matches the start of the string
2) (?<firstchar>[A-Za-z]) matches the first character
3) (?<alphachars>[A-Za-z]) matches every character up to the space
4) We now change our "spaces" regex, to lookahead to the alpha char, so we don't consume it. We change (?<spaces> [A-Za-z]) to (?<spaces> ?=[A-Za-z]). This matches the space and looks ahead to the subsequent alpha char, but doesn't consume it.
5) (?<specialchars>[A-Za-z]['-][A-Za-z]) matches the alpha char, the special char, and the subsequent alpha char.
6) We use a wildcard to repeat matching our previous 3 rules multiple times, and we match until the end of the line.
I also added lookaheads to the "firstchar", "specialchars" and "spaces" capture groups, I've bolded the changes below.
^(?<firstchar>(?=[A-Za-z]))((?<alphachars>[A-Za-z])|(?<specialchars>[A-Za-z]['-](?=[A-Za-z]))|(?<spaces> (?=[A-Za-z])))*$
This short regex should do it ^([a-zA-Z]+?)([-\s'][a-zA-Z]+)*?$ ,
([a-zA-Z]+?) - Means the String should start with alphabets.
([-\s'][a-zA-Z]+)*? - Means the string must have hyphen,space or apostrophe followed by alphabets.
^ and $ - denote start and end of string
Here's the link to regex demo.
Try this one
^[^- '](?=(?![A-Z]?[A-Z]))(?=(?![a-z]+[A-Z]))(?=(?!.*[A-Z][A-Z]))(?=(?!.*[- '][- '.]))(?=(?!.*[.][-'.]))[A-Za-z- '.]{2,}$
Demo
I'm trying to modify a fairly basic regex pattern in C# that tests for phone numbers.
The patterns is -
[0-9]+(\.[0-9][0-9]?)?
I have two questions -
1) The existing expression does work (although it is fairly restrictive) but I can't quite understand how it works. Regexps for similar issues seem to look more like this one -
/^[0-9()]+$/
2) How could I extend this pattern to allow brackets, periods and a single space to separate numbers. I tried a few variations to include -
[0-9().+\s?](\.[0-9][0-9]?)?
Although i can't seem to create a valid pattern.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
[0-9]+(\.[0-9][0-9]?)?
First of all, I recommend checking out either regexr.com or regex101.com, so you yourself get an understanding of how regex works. Both websites will give you a step-by-step explanation of what each symbol in the regex does.
Now, one of the main things you have to understand is that regex has special characters. This includes, among others, the following: []().-+*?\^$. So, if you want your regex to match a literal ., for example, you would have to escape it, since it's a special character. To do so, either use \. or [.]. Backslashes serve to escape other characters, while [] means "match any one of the characters in this set". Some special characters don't have a special meaning inside these brackets and don't require escaping.
Therefore, the regex above will match any combination of digits of length 1 or more, followed by an optional suffix (foobar)?, which has to be a dot, followed by one or two digits. In fact, this regex seems more like it's supposed to match decimal numbers with up to two digits behind the dot - not phone numbers.
/^[0-9()]+$/
What this does is pretty simple - match any combination of digits or round brackets that has the length 1 or greater.
[0-9().+\s?](\.[0-9][0-9]?)?
What you're matching here is:
one of: a digit, round bracket, dot, plus sign, whitespace or question mark; but exactly once only!
optionally followed by a dot and one or two digits
A suitable regex for your purpose could be:
(\+\d{2})?((\(0\)\d{2,3})|\d{2,3})?\d+
Enter this in one of the websites mentioned above to understand how it works. I modified it a little to also allow, for example +49 123 4567890.
Also, for simplicity, I didn't include spaces - so when using this regex, you have to remove all the spaces in your input first. In C#, that should be possible with yourString.Replace(" ", ""); (simply replacing all spaces with nothing = deleting spaces)
The + after the character set is a quantifier (meaning the preceeding character, character set or group is repeated) at least one, and unlimited number of times and it's greedy (matched the most possible).
Then [0-9().+\s]+ will match any character in set one or more times.
I've read through a lot of really interesting stuff recently about regex. Especially about creating your own regex boundaries
One thing that I don't think I've seen done (I'm 100% it has been done, but I haven't noticed any examples) is how to exclude a regex match if it's preceded by a 'special character', such as & ! % $ #. For example:
If I use the regex (Note this is from C#)
([A-Z]{2,}\\b)
It will match any capital letters that are two or more in length, and use the \b boundary to make sure the two capital letters don't start with or end with any other letters. But here's where I'm not sure how this would behave:
AA -Match
sAB -No Match
ACs -No Match
!AD -Match
AF! -Match
I would like to know how to select only two or more capital letters that aren't preceded by a lower case letter/number/symbol, or followed by a lower case letter/number/special characters.
I've seen people use spaces, so make sure the string starts with or ends with a space, but that doesn't work if it's at the beginning or end of a line.
So, the output I would look for from the example above would be:
AA -Match
sAB -No Match
ACs -No Match
!AD -No Match
AF! -No Match
Any help is appreciated.
You just need to use a lookbehind and a lookahead:
(?<![a-z\d!##$%^&*()])[A-Z]{2,}(?![a-z\d!##$%^&*()])
See regex demo
The (?<![a-z\d!##$%^&*()]) lookbehind makes sure there is no lowercase letters ([a-z]), digits (\d), or special characters that you defined. If there is one, the match is failed, nothing is returned.
The (?![a-z\d!##$%^&*()]) lookahead also fails a match if the same characters are found after the ALLCAPS letters.
See more details on Lookahead and Lookbehind Zero-Length Assertions here.
I think it's enough to just precede the pattern you have with a negation of lower case letter and any symbols you want to exclude. My example only excludes !, but you can add to the list as appropriate. ^ inside brackets negates what is inside them. So, for example, you can incorporate the pattern
/[^a-z!][A-Z]{2,}[^a-z!]/g
I have an ASP.NET MVC application containing a form field called 'First/last name'. I need to add some basic validation to ensure people enter at least two words. It doesn't need to be totally comprehensive in checking word length etc, we essentially just need to prevent people from entering just their first name which is what's happening currently. I don't want to limit to just alphabetic characters as some names include punctuation. I just want to ensure that people have entered at least two words separated by a space.
I have the following regex currently:
[RegularExpression(#"^((\b[a-zA-Z]{2,40}\b)\s*){2,}$", ErrorMessage = "Invalid first/last name")]
This works to an extent (it checks for 2 words) but it's invalid if punctuation is entered, which isn't what I'm looking for.
Could anyone suggest how to modify the above so that it doesn't matter if punctuation is used in the words? I'm not good with the regular expression syntax, hence asking here.
Thanks.
You want two words, so at least one space between them, and beyond that you want to allow everything else (e.g., punctuation). So keep it simple:
\w.*\s.*\w
Or if you must anchor it to start and end:
^.*\w.*\s.*\w.*$
These will match, for example, D' Addario (but not D'Artagnan by itself, since it counts as one word by the space criterion).
Maybe just:
#"\w\s\w"
word white space word
Hi you can use this regex for validation
'^[a-zA-Z0-9]+ {1}[a-zA-Z0-9]+$`'
Demo http://rubular.com/r/YN8eFa1yFE
If you just want to allow a sequence of non-whitespace characters followed by 1 or more sequences of whitespace characters followed by non-whitespace characters, you can use
^\s*\S+(?:\s+\S+)+\s*$
See regex demo
It won't accept just First or First .
Regex breakdown:
^ - start of string
\s* - zero or more whitespace
\S+ - 1 or more non-whitespace symbols
(?:\s+\S+)+ - 1 or more sequences of ...
\s+ - 1 or more whitespace sequences (remove + to allow only 1 whitespace between words)
\S+ - 1 or more non-whitespace symbols
\s* - zero or more whitespace
$ - end of string