PHP regular expression match any character with space tab carriage return and new lines

Question

How can i match text that is 10 characters at minimum and 4000 at maximum and that text can be any character. Furthermore i need to accept space tab carriage return and new lines.

I tried:

"/.{10,4000}$/"

But that didn't work! I think that the dot does not include carriage return for example.

So can anybody help me with this ?

Sorry any misspelling, i am Portuguese.

nop, that is actually a good question! i thought regex would be more solid .. — Fábio Linhares, Dec 03 '13 at 20:01

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 03 '13 at 19:52

6

Note that the dot will match any character. So why not just do this:

if(strlen($text) >= 10 && strlen($text) <= 4000) {
    echo "match!";
}

answered Dec 03 '13 at 19:52

jszobody

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+1 for not using regex where it isn't needed – scrowler Dec 03 '13 at 19:52
i accepted this AbraCadaver's answer because it is more specific to the question, although your answer is more effective – Fábio Linhares Dec 03 '13 at 20:05

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 03 '13 at 19:51

3

s so . matches newlines.

"/^.{10,4000}$/s"

answered Dec 03 '13 at 19:51

AbraCadaver

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You would also want to put a start of string anchor `^` or else you are just matching the last 4k characters and the string could be longer. – Jonathan Kuhn Dec 03 '13 at 19:53
Yes, thought it was in there already :) – AbraCadaver Dec 03 '13 at 19:54
1

i will aceept this answer because it is more specific to the question, althoug jszobody's answer is more effective – Fábio Linhares Dec 03 '13 at 20:04

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 03 '13 at 19:56

1

try this pattern /^.{10,4000}$/s note the "s" modifier and the anchor "^"

answered Dec 03 '13 at 19:56

alpha bravo

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@John Doyle, thanks for your comment, I believe my answer matches the accepted answer by the OP. the accepted answer just happened to be posted while I was editing mine. – alpha bravo Dec 03 '13 at 20:35

PHP regular expression match any character with space tab carriage return and new lines

3 Answers3