Need help in regular expression 2

[thelordoftherings]

Hello,

I would like to test a String with regexp like this: The String can't contain numbers and the letters a-z or A-Z.
Which regexp String should I write?

 

[timw]

I'll have a stab and let someone who knows what they're doing correct me

[^0-9a-zA-Z]

Tim
---------------------------
"Your morbid fear of losing,
destroys the lives you're using." - Ozzy

 

[ishnid]

Your question is a little ambiguous. Do you mean that the string can't contain both numbers and letters but can contain numbers without letters or letters without numbers, or do you mean that the string can't contain either numbers or letters at all?

 

[thelordoftherings]

The string can't contain numbers and ENGLISH letters. Letters in other languages it can contain.

 

[sedj]

The string can't contain numbers and ENGLISH letters

How are you going to differentiate between the letter 'A' in English and the letter 'A' in French, German, or most other latin-based alphabets ?

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[thelordoftherings]

Well, the other letters are in Hebrew which means I don't need the latin-based alphabets...

 

[timw]

So does my contribution work for you or not. Or am I invisible today?

Tim
---------------------------
"Your morbid fear of losing,
destroys the lives you're using." - Ozzy

 

[ishnid]

You haven't answered the question I posed, but I think this is what you mean: If the string can't contain numbers *or* English letters, you can do this:

if ( string.matches( "[^a-zA-Z0-9]+" ) ) {
   // the string is ok
}

 

[thelordoftherings]

Hey timw and ishind,

Both your answeres helped a lot, 10q!

 

[thelordoftherings]

Oh but now I've encountered a different problem:
I would like a match like this: [^a-zA-Z0-9]+ BUT if the number is not the first charcter of the String then keep it.
How do I do that?

 

[thelordoftherings]

What I mean is simply this:
I want the String to match this criterias:
It's first charcter can't contain 0-9 or a-zA-Z
What is the correct regexp for that?

 

[timw]

Not sure if the \W expression is what you want.

Tim
---------------------------
"Your morbid fear of losing,
destroys the lives you're using." - Ozzy

 

[thelordoftherings]

Hey timw,

What I mean is simply this:
I want the String to match this criterias:
It's first charcter can't contain 0-9 or a-zA-Z
What is the correct regexp for that?

 

[timw]

It's getting beyond my knowledge a bit. How about

^[^0-9a-zA-Z]

Tim
---------------------------
"Your morbid fear of losing,
destroys the lives you're using." - Ozzy

 

[thelordoftherings]

Nope, doesn't work...

 

[timw]

Maybe you should post a set of example strings which should fail the test and some which should pass.

Tim
---------------------------
"Your morbid fear of losing,
destroys the lives you're using." - Ozzy

 

[ishnid]

timw - that'd work in many languages. Java's String.matches() method puts an implied `^' and `$' around your regexp, so the regexp has to match the entire string, not a portion of it.

This is a slight alteration of my original regexp. This will match if the first character is not a-zA-Z0-9 and the rest of the characters are anything. (that's what the .+ is for).

if ( string.matches( "[^a-zA-Z0-9].+" ) ) {
   // the string is ok
}

 

[timw]

Ahhhh, I see. Yes, that makes sense.

Tim
---------------------------
"Your morbid fear of losing,
destroys the lives you're using." - Ozzy

 

[thelordoftherings]

Thank you very much ishnid!

 

[thelordoftherings]

By the way, if for example I want to check the second letter, I should do something like this ?
[^a-zA-Z0-9][^a-zA-Z0-9].+