CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Adam
Adam

Reputation: 6122

Find exact match string that contains a + character

My URLs look like this: www.example.com/historical+locations/london and www.example.com/special/london

I want to see if the URL contains a certain format. Below expression works for the occurence of special, but the + sign in historical locations seems to mess up the matching on that string. I tried the follow expressions, none of them match...I can't seem to match on a string containing a + character

Dim urlMatch As Match = Regex.Match("/historical+locations/london",
                 "(^/special|^/\bhistorical+locations\b)/[a-zA-Z]",
                 RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

Dim urlMatch As Match = Regex.Match("/historical+locations/london",
                 "(^/special|^/historical+locations)/[a-zA-Z]",
                 RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

Dim urlMatch As Match = Regex.Match("/historical+locations/london",
                 "(^/special|^/historical+locations$)/[a-zA-Z]",
                 RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 46

Answers (2)

abc123
abc123

Reputation: 18763

You need to escape the + as it is a regex character meaning 1 or more [greedy]

to escape the regex character and make it a static character add a \ before the + like so:
\+

so escaping the / as well you get (also combining common regex that will speed up your search):

Dim urlMatch As Match = Regex.Match("/historical+locations/london",
             "^\/(special|historical\+locations)\/[a-zA-Z]+",
             RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

^\/(special|historical\+locations)\/[a-zA-Z]+

Regular expression visualization

Debuggex Demo

Upvotes: 5

Luis Daniel
Luis Daniel

Reputation: 707

You must to escape the plus sign on regex \+

Dim urlMatch As Match = Regex.Match("/historical+locations/london",
                 "(^/special|^/\bhistorical\+locations\b)/[a-zA-Z]",
                 RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

Upvotes: 3

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