Develop Reference

RegEx for single asterisk (*) and alphanumeric

I need a javascript regex that accepts any alphanumeric character (can be any amount of characters or 0 characters if an asterisk is present) and a single asterisk anywhere in the string (but it does not need the asterisk).
Matches
*
abc
*abc
abc*
a*bc
Invalid Matches
**
*_abc
*abc*
abc**
**abc
I have
^([A-Za-z\d*]?)+$
but that matches multiple asterisks and I'm not sure how to only allow one https://regex101.com/r/a1C9bf/1

You may use this regex with a negative lookahead:
/^(?!(?:.*\*){2})[A-Za-z\d*]+$/gm
Updated RegEx Demo
Negative lookahead (?!(?:.*\*){2}) fails the match if there are more than one * in input.

Without requiring any look-ahead, you could use ^([\da-zA-Z]+|[\da-zA-Z]*\*[\da-zA-Z]*)$
https://regex101.com/r/xW2IvR/2

You could do:
^(?=.)[A-Za-z\d]*\*?[A-Za-z\d]*$
This will match any string that that's at least one character long ((?=.)), starts with zero or more alphanumeric characters, contains an optional *, and ends with zero or more alphanumeric characters.
You could also replace [A-Za-z\d] with [^\W_] to make it a little shorter (but slightly harder to read):
^(?=.)[^\W_]*\*?[^\W_]*$

You want one match one of two possible cases:
an asterisk surrounded by zero or more alphanumeric characters
one or more alphanumeric characters
Then this is your regex:
^([a-zA-Z\d]*\*[a-zA-Z\d]*|[a-zA-Z\d]+)$

javascript regex requiring at least one letter, one number and prevents from adding certain words

I'm trying to modify my regex which requires user to type at least one letter and one digit which looks like this :
new RegExp('^(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[0-9]).+$')
And I want to prevent user from using certain words like email address part before #.
So let's assume the email address is example#example.com
I want to force user to use a string that doesn't contain example in it (any part of the string)
This is what I have so far:
\b(?:(?!example)\w)+\b
But it doesn't really force the user to use at least one character and one digit.
When I'm trying to restric it I'm ending up with this:
\b(?:(?!example).*[a-z].*[0-9])+\b
But now the strings must follow the order of example then a [a-z] and then [0-9]
Any help greatly appreciated
Thanks!

In your sample the negative lookahead disallows example only at start of the string. Just add .*? as joker to disallow the word anywhere in the string and use word boundaries \b if needed.
/^(?!.*?example)(?=\D*\d)[^a-z]*[a-z].*$/i
(?!.*?example) first lookahead disallows example anywhere in the line
(?=\D*\d) second lookahead requires a digit after any amount of \D non-digits.
[^a-z]*[a-z] matches any amount of non-alphetic characters until an alphabetic.
See demo at regex101
Actually you just need two lookaheads for being independent of condition. One for the required digit and one for the word. The requirement of alphabetic can be done inside the pattern.
Lookarounds are zero-length assertions triggered at a certain position.

Regex for a valid hashtag

I need regular expression for validating a hashtag. Each hashtag should starts with hashtag("#").
Valid inputs:
1. #hashtag_abc
2. #simpleHashtag
3. #hashtag123
Invalid inputs:
1. #hashtag#
2. #hashtag#hashtag
I have been trying with this regex /#[a-zA-z0-9]/ but it is accepting invalid inputs also.
Any suggestions for how to do it?

The current accepted answer fails in a few places:
It accepts hashtags that have no letters in them (i.e. "#11111", "#___" both pass).
It will exclude hashtags that are separated by spaces ("hey there #friend" fails to match "#friend").
It doesn't allow you to place a min/max length on the hashtag.
It doesn't offer a lot of flexibility if you decide to add other symbols/characters to your valid input list.
Try the following regex:
/(^|\B)#(?![0-9_]+\b)([a-zA-Z0-9_]{1,30})(\b|\r)/g
It'll close up the above edge cases, and furthermore:
You can change {1,30} to your desired min/max
You can add other symbols to the [0-9_] and [a-zA-Z0-9_] blocks if you wish to later
Here's a link to the demo.

To answer the current question...
There are 2 issues:
[A-z] allows more than just letter chars ([, , ], ^, _, ` )
There is no quantifier after the character class and it only matches 1 char
Since you are validating the whole string, you also need anchors (^ and $)to ensure a full string match:
/^#\w+$/
See the regex demo.
If you want to extract specific valid hashtags from longer texts...
This is a bonus section as a lot of people seek to extract (not validate) hashtags, so here are a couple of solutions for you. Just mind that \w in JavaScript (and a lot of other regex libraries) equal to [a-zA-Z0-9_]:
#\w{1,30}\b - a # char followed with one to thirty word chars followed with a word boundary
\B#\w{1,30}\b - a # char that is either at the start of string or right after a non-word char, then one to thirty word (i.e. letter, digit, or underscore) chars followed with one to thirty word chars followed with a word boundary
\B#(?![\d_]+\b)(\w{1,30})\b - # that is either at the start of string or right after a non-word char, then one to thirty word (i.e. letter, digit, or underscore) chars (that cannot be just digits/underscores) followed with a word boundary
And last but not least, here is a Twitter hashtag regex from https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text/tree/master/js... Sorry, too long to paste in the SO post, here it is: https://gist.github.com/stribizhev/715ee1ee2dc1439ffd464d81d22f80d1.

You could try the this : /#[a-zA-Z0-9_]+/
This will only include letters, numbers & underscores.

A regex code that matches any hashtag.
In this approach any character is accepted in hashtags except main signs !##$%^&*()
(?<=(\s|^))#[^\s\!\#\#\$\%\^\&\*\(\)]+(?=(\s|$))
Usage Notes
Turn on "g" and "m" flags when using!
It is tested for Java and JavaScript languages via https://regex101.com and VSCode tools.
It is available on this repo.

Unicode general categories can help with that task:
/^#[\p{L}\p{Nd}_]+$/gu
I use \p{L} and \p{Nd} unicode categories to match any letter or decimal digit number. You can add any necessary category for your regex. The complete list of categories can be found here: https://unicode.org/reports/tr18/#General_Category_Property
Regex live demo:
https://regexr.com/5tvmo

useful and tested regex for detecting hashtags in the text
/(^|\s)(#[a-zA-Z\d_]+)/ig
examples of valid matching hashtag:
#abc
#ab_c
#ABC
#aBC

/\B(?:#|＃)((?![\p{N}_]+(?:$|\b|\s))(?:[\p{L}\p{M}\p{N}_]{1,60}))/ug
allow any language characters or characters with numbers or _.
numbers alone or numbers with _ are not allowed.
It's unicode regex, so if you are using Python, you may need to install regex.
to test it https://regex101.com/r/NLHUQh/1

Regex - how to ignore order of the matched groups? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Password REGEX with min 6 chars, at least one letter and one number and may contain special characters
(10 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
I'm trying to create a regex validation for a password which is meant to be:
6+ characters long
Has at least one a-z
Has at least one A-Z
Has at leat one 0-9
So, in other words, the match will have :
at least one a-z, A-Z, 0-9
at least 3 any other characters
I've came up with:
((.*){3,}[a-z]{1,}[A-Z]{1,}[0-9]{1,})
it seems pretty simple and logical to me, but 2 things go wrong:
quantifier {3,} for (.*) somehow doesn't work and destroys whole regex. At first I had {6,} at the end but then regex would affect the quantifiers in inner groups, so it will require [A-Z]{6,} instead of [A-Z]{1,}
when I remove {3,} the regex works, but will match only if the groups are in order - so that it will match aaBB11, but not BBaa11

This is a use case where I wouldn't use a single regular expression, but multiple simpler ones.
Still, to answer your question: If you only want to validate that the password matches those criteria, you could use lookaheads:
^(?=.{6})(?=.*?[a-z])(?=.*?[A-Z])(?=.*?[0-9])
You're basically looking for a position from which you look at
6 characters (and maybe more to follow, doesn't matter): (?=.{6})
maybe something, then a lowercase letter: (?=.*?[a-z])
maybe something, then an uppercase letter: (?=.*?[A-Z])
maybe something, then a digit: (?=.*?[0-9])
The order of appearance is arbitrary due to the maybe something parts.
(Note that I've interpreted 6 characters long as at least 6 characters long.)

I believe this is what you want:
^(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[0-9])[!-~]{6,}$
If we follow your spec to the letter, your validation password looks like this:
^(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[0-9]).{6,}$
However, we need to improve on this, because apart from the number, lower-case and upper-case letter, are you really willing to accept any character? For instance, can the user use a character in the Thai language? A space character? A tab? Didn't think so. :)
If you want to allow all the printable ASCII characters apart from space, instead of a dot, we can use this character range: [!-~]
How does it work?
The ^ anchor makes sure we start the match at the start of the string
The (?=.*[a-z]) lookahead ensures we have a lower-case character
The (?=.*[A-Z]) lookahead ensures we have an upper-case character
The (?=.*[0-9]) lookahead ensures we a digit
The (?=.*[a-z]) lookahead ensures we have a lower-case character
The [!-~]{6,} matches six or more ASCII printable ASCII characters that are not space.
The $ ensures we have reached the end of the string (otherwise, the password could contain more characters that are not allowed).

you could use this pattern ^(?=.*[a-z])(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[0-9]).{6,}

Javascript Regex Pattern

I'm trying to create a regex pattern that allows the user to create a username with the following specifications. (For the purposes of this initial pattern, I'm only using standard american English alphabet.
The first character must be an alphabetic letter (uppercase or lowercase). [a-zA-Z]
The last character must be a alphanumeric (uppercase or lowercase). [a-zA-Z0-9]
Any characters in between must be letters or numbers with one rule:
The user can use a period(.), dash(-), or underscore(_) but it must be followed by an alphanumeric character. So no repeats of one or more of these characters at a time.
I've tried the following regex pattern but am not getting the results I was hoping for. Thanks for taking the time to help me on this.
^[a-zA-Z]([a-zA-Z0-9]+[._-]?[a-zA-Z0-9]+)+$
EDIT
It might actually be working the way I expected. But I'm always getting two matches returned to me. The first one being the entire valid string, the second being a shortened version of the first string usually chopping off the first couple of characters.
Examples of valid inputs:
Spidy
Spidy.Man
Ama-za-zing_Spidy
Examples of invalid inputs:
Extreme___Spidy (repeated underscores)
The_-_Spidy (repeated special characters)
_ _ SPIDY _ _ (starts and ends with special characters)

Sounds like this pattern:
^[a-zA-Z]([._-]?[a-zA-Z0-9])*$

^[a-zA-Z]([._-]?[a-zA-Z0-9]+)*$