Regex to match symbol & - . '

Question

I'm trying to create a Regex test in JavaScript that will test a string to contain any of these characters:

 a...z A..Z 0..9 and  & - . '

I have do this but not match:

^[a-zA-Z0-9&.-]

Complete Code:

    <field-validator type="regex">
        <param name="expression">^[a-zA-Z0-9&.-]+$</param>
        <param name="caseSensitive">false</param>
        <message key="format.name" />
    </field-validator>

You mean it has to match the first regex, but not the second? — Dylan Meeus, Aug 29 '16 at 12:36
So you want to match `& - . '`: then why do you look for `a-zA-Z0-9`, and why don't you list the single quote? Seems trivial that you should remove those characters and add the quote, or I completely miss your point. — trincot, Aug 29 '16 at 12:38
escape hypen(-) with \ because it specifies range in [ ] square bracket — Shekhar Khairnar, Aug 29 '16 at 12:52
@WiktorStribiżew your response is exact so of can include `'` character — Mercer, Aug 29 '16 at 13:01
A `'` can be added as `'` - `^[a-zA-Z0-9&'.-]+$`. Does it work for you? Or try hex values: `^[a-zA-Z0-9\x26\x27.-]+$` — Wiktor Stribiżew, Aug 29 '16 at 13:02
@WiktorStribiżew with your expression numbers and `'` not work — Mercer, Aug 29 '16 at 13:04
Last try to understand what you need - what if you remove `^` and `$`? `[a-zA-Z0-9\x26\x27.-]`? Or just in case a full string match is expected - `.*[a-zA-Z0-9\x26\x27.-].*`? — Wiktor Stribiżew, Aug 29 '16 at 13:09
Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/122106/discussion-between-mercer-and-wiktor-stribizew). — Mercer, Aug 29 '16 at 13:12

Greg · Answer 1 · 2016-08-29T13:01:53.763

3

this appears to work:

[\&\-\.']

adding in the letters and numbers:

[a-zA-Z0-9\&\-\.']

(Updated after comment)

edited Aug 29 '16 at 13:01

answered Aug 29 '16 at 12:37

Greg

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`&-.` is range selector. Escape `-`. – Tushar Aug 29 '16 at 12:43

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 29 '16 at 13:22

You are using the regex inside XML file, so best way is to use a CDATA block in order to use literal & and ' symbols inside it. Either of the two will work:

<param name="regex"><![CDATA[[a-zA-Z0-9'&.-]]]></param>

or (if a full string match is required):

<param name="regex"><![CDATA[(?s).*[a-zA-Z0-9'&.-].*]]></param>

Since you are using <param name="caseSensitive">false</param>, you may even omit the A-Z or a-z in the pattern.

Note that (?s) enables the DOTALL mode so that a . could match any character including a newline.

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

1

You have to \ escape special characters.

[a-z0-9\-&\.']

edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

Community

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answered Aug 29 '16 at 12:43

Alex

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Note that if you put the hyphen as the last character, it does not need to be escaped. – trincot Aug 29 '16 at 12:59

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 29 '16 at 12:39

0

If you want to test of the input contains anywhere one of these characters, remove the leading ^ of the regex. That says that any of these characters has to be the first character.

Also, your regex does not include the character '.

answered Aug 29 '16 at 12:39

Martin Nyolt

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Regex to match symbol & - . '

4 Answers4