CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregexpreg-match
birderic
birderic

Reputation: 3765

Regular expression matching more than allowed characters

I am trying to validate that the given string contains contains only letters, numbers, spaces, and characters from a set of symbols (!-?():&,;+). Here is what I have so far:

/^[a-zA-Z0-9 !-?\(\):&,;\+]+$/

Now this works somewhat but it accepts other characters as well. For example, strings containing * or # validate. I thought that the ^ at the beginning of the expression and the $ at the end meant that it would match the whole string. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 96

Answers (2)

mario
mario

Reputation: 145512

You have specified a "range" within your character class:

[!-?]

Means all ASCII symbols between ! and ?
http://www.regular-expressions.info/charclass.html

You need to escape the minus - with a \ backslash. (OTOH the backslash is redundant before the + and ( and ) within a character class.)

Upvotes: 2

FailedDev
FailedDev

Reputation: 26940

/^[a-zA-Z0-9 !-?\(\):&,;\+]+$/

The - is not nice where you placed it! If you want to place - inside a character class be sure to either place it first or last e.g. 

/^[a-zA-Z0-9 !?\(\):&,;\+-]+$/

Otherwise it will take the range of ! until ? whatever this range maybe...Depends on your regex machine.

Finally special characters are not special inside character classes. So no need to escape most of them : 

/^[a-zA-Z0-9 !?():&,;+-]+$/

Upvotes: 4

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