CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexvalidation
Adam
Adam

Reputation: 3665

Regex for city with Apostrophe

Here's is my javascript regex for a city name and it's handling almost all cases except this.

^[a-zA-Z]+[\. - ']?(?:[\s-][a-zA-Z]+)*$

(Should pass)

(Should Fail)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2093

Answers (3)

Cerbrus
Cerbrus

Reputation: 72857

Try this regex:

^(?:[a-zA-Z]+(?:[.'\-,])?\s?)+$

This does match:

Coeur d'Alene
San Tan Valley
St. Thomas
St. Thomas-Vincent
St. Thomas Vincent
St Thomas-Vincent
St-Thomas
anaconda-deer lodge county
Monte St.Thomas
San. Tan. Valley
Washington, D.C.

But doesn't match:

St.. Thomas
St.. Thomas--Vincent
St.- Thomas -Vincent
St--Thomas

(I allowed it to match San. Tan. Valley, since there's probably a city name out there with 2 periods.)

How the regex works:

# ^         - Match the line start.
# (?:       - Start a non-catching group
# [a-zA-Z]+ - That starts with 1 or more letters.
# [.'\-,]?  - Followed by one period, apostrophe dash, or comma. (optional)
# \s?       - Followed by a space (optional)
# )+        - End of the group, match at least one or more of the previous group.
# $         - Match the end of the line

Upvotes: 0

Bergi
Bergi

Reputation: 664307

This matches all your names from the first list and not those from the second:

/^[a-zA-Z]+(?:\.(?!-))?(?:[\s-](?:[a-z]+')?[a-zA-Z]+)*$/

Multiline explanation:

^[a-zA-Z]+     # begins with a word
(?:\.(?!-))?   # maybe a dot but not followed by a dash
(?:
 [\s-]         # whitespace or dash
 (?:[a-z]+\')? # maybe a lowercase-word and an apostrophe
 [a-zA-Z]+     # word
)*$            # repeated to the end

To allow the dots anywhere, but not two of them, use this:

/^(?!.*?\..*?\.)[a-zA-Z]+(?:(?:\.\s?|\s|-)(?:[a-z]+')?[a-zA-Z]+)*$/

^(?!.*?\..*?\.) # does not contain two dots
[a-zA-Z]+       # a word
(?:
 (?:\.\s?|\s|-) # delimiter: dot with maybe whitespace, whitespace or dash
 (?:[a-z]+\')?  # maybe a lowercase-word and an apostrophe
 [a-zA-Z]+      # word
)*$             # repeated to the end

Upvotes: 1

Pascal M
Pascal M

Reputation: 71

I think the following regexp fits your requirements :

^([Ss]t\. |[a-zA-Z ]|\['-](?:[^-']))+$

On the other hand, you may question the idea of using a regexp to do that... Whatever the complexity of your regexp, there will always be some fool finding a new unwanted pattern that matches...

Usually when you need to have valid city names, it's better to use some geocoding api, like google geocoding API

Upvotes: 0

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