Regex for combination of given rules

Question

I'm trying to write regex to validate the password for the given rule.

Passwords must be at least 8 characters in length and contain at least 3 of the following 4 types of characters:

lower case letters (i.e. a-z)
upper case letters (i.e. A-Z)
numbers (i.e. 0-9)
special characters (e.g. !@#$&*)

I was going through this discussion and found this really great answer over there.

Now I'm trying to write regex for the mentioned requirements and I came up with the solution like this

^(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[!@#$&*])(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[a-z]).{8,}|
(?=.*[!@#$&*])(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[a-z]).{8,}|
(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[a-z]).{8,}|
(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[!@#$&*])(?=.*[a-z]).{8,}|
(?=.*[A-Z])(?=.*[!@#$&*])(?=.*[0-9]).{8,}$

and it is working perfect see rubular but I want to optimize these regex and I'm not sure If there are any way to simplify this. Any suggestion will be appreciated. Many thanks

Optimizing this regex means splitting it into several smaller regexps. They will be really more readable and maintainable. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Aug 01 '16 at 11:36
@WiktorStribiżew I will really appreciate If you can provide any useful link here, Thank you — Bibek Sharma, Aug 01 '16 at 11:38
If the regex works fine, perhaps, a better place to ask this question would be [codereview.se]. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Aug 01 '16 at 11:40

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 01 '16 at 12:30

Do yourself (and anyone who will work on that app in the future) a favour, and split the regexp in 4:

{
  :lowercase => /regex_for_lowercase/,
  :uppercase => /regex_for_uppercase/,
  :digits => /regex_for_digits/,
  :symbols => /regex_for_symbols/,
}

then count how many of these 4 rules the password matches. It will also give you the chance to show more helpful error message if the entered password does not validate.

Regex for combination of given rules

1 Answers1