CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Pop Vlad
Pop Vlad

Reputation: 179

RegEx expression not allowing only spaces?

I have this regEx expression which allows only spaces, letters and dashes. I'd like to modify it so it wouldn't allow ONLY spaces too. Can someone help me ?

/^([A-zăâîșțĂÂÎȘȚ-\s])+$/

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4847

Answers (1)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626870

You can use a negative lookahead to restrict this generic pattern:

/^(?!\s+$)[A-Za-zăâîșțĂÂÎȘȚ\s-]+$/
  ^^^^^^^^

See the regex demo

The (?!\s+$) lookahead is executed once at the very beginning and returns false if there are 1 or more whitespaces until the end of the string.

Also, your regex contained a classical issue of [A-z] that matches more than just ASCII letters, you need to replace this with [A-Za-z] (or just [a-z] and use the /i case insensitive modifier).

Also, the - inside a character class is usually placed at the end so as not to escape it, and it will be parsed as a literal hyphen (however, you might want to escape it if another developer will have to update this pattern by adding more symbols to the character class).

And just in case this is a regex engine that does not support lookarounds:

^[A-Za-zăâîșțĂÂÎȘȚ\s-]*[A-Za-zăâîșțĂÂÎȘȚ-][A-Za-zăâîșțĂÂÎȘȚ\s-]*$

It requires at least 1 non-space character from the allowed set (also matching 1 obligatory symbol).

Another regex demo

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions