I have a regular expression in JavaScript to allow numeric and (,.+() -) character in phone field
my regex is [0-9-,.+() ]
It works for numeric as well as above six characters but it also allows characters like % and $ which are not in above list.
Even though you don't have to, I always make it a point to escape metacharacters (easier to read and less pain):
[0-9\-,\.+\(\) ]
But this won't work like you expect it to because it will only match one valid character while allowing other invalid ones in the string. I imagine you want to match the entire string with at least one valid character:
^[0-9\-,\.\+\(\) ]+$
Your original regex is not actually matching %. What it is doing is matching valid characters, but the problem is that it only matches one of them. So if you had the string 435%, it matches the 4, and so the regex reports that it has a match.
If you try to match it against just one invalid character, it won't match. So your original regex doesn't match the string %:
> /[0-9\-,\.\+\(\) ]/.test("%")
false
> /[0-9\-,\.\+\(\) ]/.test("44%5")
true
> "444%6".match(/[0-9\-,\.+\(\) ]/)
["4"] //notice that the 4 was matched.
Going back to the point about escaping, I find that it is easier to escape it rather than worrying about the different rules where specific metacharacters are valid in a character class. For example, - is only valid in the following cases:
When used in an actual character class with proper-order such as [a-z] (but not [z-a])
When used as the first or last character, or by itself, so [-a], [a-], or [-].
When used after a range like [0-9-,] or [a-d-j] (but keep in mind that [9-,] is invalid and [a-d-j] does not match the letters e through f).
For these reasons, I escape metacharacters to make it clear that I want to match the actual character itself and to remove ambiguities.
You just need to anchor your regex:
^[0-9-,.+() ]+$
In character class special char doesn't need to be escaped, except ] and -.
But, these char are not escaped when:
] is alone in the char class []]
- is at the begining [-abc] or at the end [abc-] of the char class or after the last end range [a-c-x]
Escape characters with special meaning in your RegExp. If you're not sure and it isn't an alphabet character, it usually doesn't hurt to escape it, too.
If the whole string must match, include the start ^ and end $ of the string in your RegExp, too.
/^[\d\-,\.\+\(\) ]*$/
Related
How can I match the pattern abc_[someArbitaryStringHere]_xyz?
To clarify, I would want the regex to match strings of the nature:
abc_xyz, abc_asdfsdf_xyz, abc_32rwrd_xyz etc.
I tried with /abc_*_xyz/ but this seems to be an incorrect expression.
Use
/^abc(?:_.*_|_)xyz$/
Be sure to include the ^ and $, they guard the beginning and end of the string. Otherwise strings like "123abc_foo_xyz" will match.
(?:_.*_|_) Is a non-capture group that matches either _[someArbitaryStringHere]_ or a single _
Your regex would be,
abc(?:(?:_[^_]+)+)?_xyz
DEMO
Assuming abc_xyz is indeed a string you want to match, and isn't just a typo, then your regex is:
/abc(?:_[^_]+)?_xyz/
This will match abc, then optionally match a _ followed by greedily matching anything but _s. After this optional part, it will match the ending _xyz.
If this is to match an entire string (as opposed to just extracting substrings from a bigger string), then you can just put ^ at the start and $ at the end, like so:
/^abc(?:_[^_]+)?_xyz$/
EDIT: Just noticed that JavaScript doesn't support possessive matching, only greedy. Changed ++ to +.
EDIT2: The above regexes also assume that your "arbitrary string" does not contain more underscores. They can be expanded to allow more rules.
For example, to allow just anything, a truly arbitrary string, try:
/abc(?:_.*)?_xyz/ or /^abc(?:_.*)?_xyz$/
But if you want to be really clever, and disallow consecutive underscores, you can do:
/abc(?:_[^_]+)*_xyz/ or /^abc(?:_[^_]+)*_xyz$/
And lastly, if you want to "only allow letters or numbers" in your arbitrary strings, just replace [^_] with [a-zA-Z0-9].
The '*' mean you will match 0 or more. but of what?
/abc_[a-z0-9]*_xyz/im
The DOT. will match any character ANY.
/abc_(.*)_xyz/im
You need to check for at least one underscore as well if you want to match abc_xyz:
abc_+.*xyz
EDIT: Thank you all for your inputs. What ever you answered was right.But I thought I didnt explain it clear enough.
I want to check the input value while typing itself.If user is entering any other character that is not in the list the entered character should be rolled back.
(I am not concerning to check once the entire input is entered).
I want to validate a date input field which should contain only characters 0-9[digits], -(hyphen) , .(dot), and /(forward slash).Date may be like 22/02/1999 or 22.02.1999 or 22-02-1999.No validation need to be done on either occurrence or position. A plain validation is enough to check whether it has any other character than the above listed chars.
[I am not good at regular expressions.]
Here is what I thought should work but not.
var reg = new RegExp('[0-9]./-');
Here is jsfiddle.
Your expression only tests whether anywhere in the string, a digit is followed by any character (. is a meta character) and /-. For example, 5x/- or 42%/-foobar would match.
Instead, you want to put all the characters into the character class and test whether every single character in the string is one of them:
var reg = /^[0-9.\/-]+$/
^ matches the start of the string
[...] matches if the character is contained in the group (i.e. any digit, ., / or -).
The / has to be escaped because it also denotes the end of a regex literal.
- between two characters describes a range of characters (between them, e.g. 0-9 or a-z). If - is at the beginning or end it has no special meaning though and is literally interpreted as hyphen.
+ is a quantifier and means "one or more if the preceding pattern". This allows us (together with the anchors) to test whether every character of the string is in the character class.
$ matches the end of the string
Alternatively, you can check whether there is any character that is not one of the allowed ones:
var reg = /[^0-9.\/-]/;
The ^ at the beginning of the character class negates it. Here we don't have to test every character of the string, because the existence of only character is different already invalidates the string.
You can use it like so:
if (reg.test(str)) { // !reg.test(str) for the first expression
// str contains an invalid character
}
Try this:
([0-9]{2}[/\-.]){2}[0-9]{4}
If you are not concerned about the validity of the date, you can easily use the regex:
^[0-9]{1,2}[./-][0-9]{1,2}[./-][0-9]{4}$
The character class [./-] allows any one of the characters within the square brackets and the quantifiers allow for either 1 or 2 digit months and dates, while only 4 digit years.
You can also group the first few groups like so:
^([0-9]{1,2}[./-]){2}[0-9]{4}$
Updated your fiddle with the first regex.
Having the following regex: ([a-zA-Z0-9//._-]{3,12}[^//._-]) used like pattern="([a-zA-Z0-9/._-]{3,12}[^/._-])" to validate an HTML text input for username, I wonder if is there anyway of telling it to check that the string has only one of the following: ., -, _
By that I mean, that I'm in need of regex that would accomplish the following (if possible)
alex-how => Valid
alex-how. => Not valid, because finishing in .
alex.how => Valid
alex.how-ha => Not valid, contains already a .
alex-how_da => Not valid, contains already a -
The problem with my current regex, is that for some reason, accepts any character at the end of the string that is not ._-, and can't figure it out why.
The other problem, is that it doesn't check to see that it contains only of the allowed special characters.
Any ideas?
Try this one out:
^(?!(.*[.|_|-].*){2})(?!.*[.|_|-]$)[a-zA-Z0-9//._-]{3,12}$
Regexpal link. The regex above allow at max one of ., _ or -.
What you want is one or more strings containing all upper, lower and digit characters
followed by either one or none of the characters in "-", ".", or "_", followed by at least one character:
^[a-zA-Z0-9]+[-|_|\.]{0,1}[a-zA-Z0-9]+$
Hope this will work for you:-
It says starts with characters followed by (-,.,_) and followed and end with characters
^[\w\d]*[-_\.\w\d]*[\w\d]$
Seems to me you want:
^[A-Za-z0-9]+(?:[\._-][A-Za-z0-9]+)?$
Breaking it down:
^: beginning of line
[A-Za-z0-9]+: one or more alphanumeric characters
(?:[\._-][A-Za-z0-9]+)?: (optional, non-captured) one of your allowed special characters followed by one or more alphanumeric characters
$: end of line
It's unclear from your question if you wanted one of your special characters (., -, and _) to be optional or required (e.g., zero-or-one versus exactly-one). If you actually wanted to require one such special character, you would just get rid of the ? at the very end.
Here's a demonstration of this regular expression on your example inputs:
http://rubular.com/r/SQ4aKTIEF6
As for the length requirement (between 3 and 12 characters): This might be a cop-out, but personally I would argue that it would make more sense to validate this by just checking the length property directly in JavaScript, rather than over-complicating the regular expression.
^(?=[a-zA-Z0-9/._-]{3,12}$)[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?:[/._-][a-zA-Z0-9]+)?$
or, as a JavaScript regex literal:
/^(?=[a-zA-Z0-9\/._-]{3,12})[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?:[\/._-][a-zA-Z0-9]+)?$/
The lookahead, (?=[a-zA-Z0-9/._-]{3,12}$), does the overall-length validation.
Then [a-zA-Z0-9]+ ensures that the name starts with at least one non-separator character.
If there is a separator, (?:[/._-][a-zA-Z0-9]+)? ensures that there's at least one non-separator following it.
Note that / has no special meaning in a regex. You only have to escape it if you're using a regex literal (because / is the regex delimiter), and you escape it by prefixing with a backslash, not another forward-slash. And inside a character class, you don't need to escape the dot (.) to make it match a literal dot.
The dot in regex has a special meaning: "any character here".
If you mean a literal dot, you should escape it to tell the regex parser so.
Escape dot in a regex range
Whats wrong with this regular expression?
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#-\('"]{1,7}$/;
when I enter the following valid input, it fails:
a&'-#"2
Also check for 2 consecutive spaces within the input.
The dash needs to be either escaped (\-) or placed at the end of the character class, or it will signify a range (as in A-Z), not a literal dash:
/^[A-Z\d\s&#('"-]{1,7}$/i
would be a better regex.
N. B: [#-\(] would have matched #, $, %, &, ' or (.
To address the added requirement of not allowing two consecutive spaces, use a lookahead assertion:
/^(?!.*\s{2})[A-Z\d\s&#('"-]{1,7}$/i
(?!.*\s{2}) means "Assert that it's impossible to match (from the current position) any string followed by two whitespace characters". One caveat: The dot doesn't match newline characters.
The - (hyphen) has a special meaning inside a character class, used for specifying ranges. Did you mean to escape it?:
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#\-\('"]{1,7}$/;
This RegExp matches your input.
You have an unescaped - in the middle of your character class. This means that you're actually searching for all characters between and including # and ( (which are #, $, %, &, ', and (). Either move it to the end or escape it with a backslash. Your regex should read:
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#\('"-]{1,7}$/
or
/^[a-zA-Z\d\s&#\-\('"]{1,7}$/
remove the ; at the end and
^[a-zA-Z\d\s\&\#\-\(\'\"]+$
Your input does not match the regular expression. The problem here is the hyphen in you regexp. If you move it from its position after the '#' character to the start of the regex, like so:
/^[-a-zA-Z\d\s&#\('"]{1,7}$/;
everything is fine and dandy.
You can always use Rubular for checking your regular expressions. I use it on a regular (no pun intended) basis.
I have a regular expression ^(?=.*?[A-Za-z])\S*$ which indicates that the input should contain alphabets and can contain special characters or digits along with the alphabets. But it is not allowing white spaces since i have used \S.
Can some one suggest me a reg exp which should contain alphabets and it can contain digits or special characters and white space but alphabets are must and the last character should not end with a white space
Quite simply:
^(?=.*?[A-Za-z]).*$
Note that in JavaScript . doesn't match new lines, and there is no dot-all flag (/s). You can use something like [\s\S] instead if that is an issue:
^(?=[\s\S]*?[A-Za-z])[\s\S]*$
Since you only have a single lookahead, you can simplify the pattern to:
^.*[A-Za-z].*$
Or, even simpler:
[A-Za-z]
[A-Za-z] will match if it finds a letter anywhere in the string, you don't really need to search the rest from start to end.
To also validate the last character isn't a whitespace, it is probably easiest to use the lookahead again (as it basically means AND in regular expressions:
^(?=.*?[A-Za-z]).*\S$