CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netregex
Bob
Bob

Reputation: 785

Regular Expression for Not Matching Exact Words

I would like my reg ex to accept characters in the set [a-zA-Z0-9.\?!%, ] and also not except the exact words "not set".

Examples of successful matches: 

category1
myCategory
Hello World!!!
notset

Examples of unsuccessful matches: 

{empty string}
not set
Not Set
NOT SET
<script>

I am using the .NET framework.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3916

Answers (4)

Bob
Bob

Reputation: 785

I ended up using 

^(?![nN][oO][tT] [sS][eE][tT]$)[a-zA-Z0-9.?!%, ]+$

When using (?i:) in my .net validators and unobtrusive javascript I noticed my client side validation was getting disabled.

Upvotes: 0

user557597
user557597

Reputation:

This might work ^(?i:(?!not set)[a-z0-9.\\?!%, ])+$ (untested)

EDIT
Didn't work for me. – Bob 4 hours ago

@Bob - Here are your samples.

Examples of successful matches: 

category1
myCategory
Hello World!!!
notset

Examples of unsuccessful matches: 

{empty string}
not set
Not Set
NOT SET
<script>

What didn't work? 

@samples = (
 'category1',
 'myCategory',
 'Hello World!!!',
 'notset',
 '',
 'not set',
 'Not Set',
 'NOT SET',
 '<script>'
);

for (@samples) {
   print "'$_'";
   if (/^(?i:(?!not set)[a-z0-9.\\?!%, ])+$/) {
      print " - yes matches\n";
   }
   else {
      print " - no\n";
   }
}

output:

'category1' - yes matches
'myCategory' - yes matches
'Hello World!!!' - yes matches
'notset' - yes matches
'' - no
'not set' - no
'Not Set' - no
'NOT SET' - no
'<script>' - no

Upvotes: 2

Kobi
Kobi

Reputation: 138027

Obviosly, you can test for "not set" by code. If it has to be a regex, you can use a negative lookahead:

^(?!not set$)[a-zA-Z0-9.?!%, ]+$

Working Example

A C# code example would be: 

Match m = Regex.Match(s, @"^(?!not set$)[a-zA-Z0-9.?!%, ]+$", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
if (m.Success)
{
    // all is well
}

If you want the match to be case insensitive (that is "Not Set" is invalid, but "not set" is valid), use:

Match m = Regex.Match(s, @"^(?!Not Set$)[a-zA-Z0-9.?!%, ]+$");

Upvotes: 9

Eder
Eder

Reputation: 1884

You can try the following code:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    string str = "NOT SET";

    if (str.ToLower().Equals("not set"))
    {
        // Do Something
    }
    else
    {
        String pattern = @"^[a-z0-9.\?!%,]+$";
        Regex regex = new Regex(pattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

        if (regex.IsMatch(str))
        {
            // Do Something
        }

    }
}

Upvotes: 1

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