Regular expression to validate City field

Question

I am creating a regular expression to validate a city field. With the following code, I only can validate a City field with one space:

Pattern pattern_ = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z]+(?:[\\s-][a-zA-Z]+)*$");

Any advice about how to improve my regular expression to validate city fields with more than one space?

Well, finally I am using this regexp:

Pattern pattern_ = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z]+(?:(?:\\s+|-)[a-zA-Z]+)*$");

But now I am having a problem with accents How do I add accents to my city field?

Answer 1

Well, the easiest way would be this:

^[a-zA-Z\s-]+$

Or if you prefer, you can do this, which will ensure that the string doesn't start or end with a whitespace or hyphen:

^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z\s-]+[a-zA-Z]$

Of course, don't forget to escape the \ in Java:

Pattern pattern_ = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z\\s-]+[a-zA-Z]$");

Answer 2

use an alternation instead of a character class:

Pattern pattern_ = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z]+(?:(?:\\s+|-)[a-zA-Z]+)*$");

Answer 3

Try:

Pattern pattern_ = Pattern.compile("^[a-zA-Z\\s-]+$");