Just starting to explore the 'wonders' of regex. Being someone who learns from trial and error, I'm really struggling because my trials are throwing up a disproportionate amount of errors... My experiments are in PHP using ereg().
Anyway. I work with first and last names separately but for now using the same regex. So far I have:
^[A-Z][a-zA-Z]+$
Any length string that starts with a capital and has only letters (capital or not) for the rest. But where I fall apart is dealing with the special situations that can pretty much occur anywhere.
Hyphenated Names (Worthington-Smythe)
Names with Apostophies (D'Angelo)
Names with Spaces (Van der Humpton) - capitals in the middle which may or may not be required is way beyond my interest at this stage.
Joint Names (Ben & Jerry)
Maybe there's some other way a name can be that I'm no thinking of, but I suspect if I can get my head around this, I can add to it. I'm pretty sure there will be instances where more than one of these situations comes up in one name.
So, I think the bottom line is to have my regex also accept a space, hyphens, ampersands and apostrophes - but not at the start or end of the name to be technically correct.
This regex is perfect for me.
^([ \u00c0-\u01ffa-zA-Z'\-])+$
It works fine in php environments using preg_match(), but doesn't work everywhere.
It matches Jérémie O'Co-nor so I think it matches all UTF-8 names.
Hyphenated Names (Worthington-Smythe)
Add a - into the second character class. The easiest way to do that is to add it at the start so that it can't possibly be interpreted as a range modifier (as in a-z).
^[A-Z][-a-zA-Z]+$
Names with Apostophies (D'Angelo)
A naive way of doing this would be as above, giving:
^[A-Z][-'a-zA-Z]+$
Don't forget you may need to escape it inside the string! A 'better' way, given your example might be:
^[A-Z]'?[-a-zA-Z]+$
Which will allow a possible single apostrophe in the second position.
Names with Spaces (Van der Humpton) - capitals in the middle which may or may not be required is way beyond my interest at this stage.
Here I'd be tempted to just do our naive way again:
^[A-Z]'?[- a-zA-Z]+$
A potentially better way might be:
^[A-Z]'?[- a-zA-Z]( [a-zA-Z])*$
Which looks for extra words at the end. This probably isn't a good idea if you're trying to match names in a body of extra text, but then again, the original wouldn't have done that well either.
Joint Names (Ben & Jerry)
At this point you're not looking at single names anymore?
Anyway, as you can see, regexes have a habit of growing very quickly...
THE BEST REGEX EXPRESSIONS FOR NAMES:
I will use the term special character to refer to the following three characters:
Dash -
Hyphen '
Dot .
Spaces and special characters can not appear twice in a row (e.g.: -- or '. or .. )
Trimmed (No spaces before or after)
You're welcome ;)
Mandatory single name, WITHOUT spaces, WITHOUT special characters:
^([A-Za-z])+$
Sierra is valid, Jack Alexander is invalid (has a space), O'Neil is invalid (has a special character)
Mandatory single name, WITHOUT spaces, WITH special characters:
^[A-Za-z]+(((\'|\-|\.)?([A-Za-z])+))?$
Sierra is valid, O'Neil is valid, Jack Alexander is invalid (has a space)
Mandatory single name, optional additional names, WITH spaces, WITH special characters:
^[A-Za-z]+((\s)?((\'|\-|\.)?([A-Za-z])+))*$
Jack Alexander is valid, Sierra O'Neil is valid
Mandatory single name, optional additional names, WITH spaces, WITHOUT special characters:
^[A-Za-z]+((\s)?([A-Za-z])+)*$
Jack Alexander is valid, Sierra O'Neil is invalid (has a special character)
SPECIAL CASE
Many modern smart devices add spaces at the end of each word, so in my applications I allow unlimited number of spaces before and after the string, then I trim it in the code behind. So I use the following:
Mandatory single name + optional additional names + spaces + special characters:
^(\s)*[A-Za-z]+((\s)?((\'|\-|\.)?([A-Za-z])+))*(\s)*$
Add your own special characters
If you wish to add your own special characters, let's say an underscore _ this is the group you need to update:
(\'|\-|\.)
To
(\'|\-|\.|\_)
PS: If you have questions comment here and I will receive an email and respond ;)
While I agree with the answers saying you basically can't do this with regex, I will point out that some of the objections (internationalized characters) can be resolved by using UTF strings and the \p{L} character class (matches a unicode "letter").
security tip: make sure to validate the size of the string before this step to avoid DoS attack that will bring down your system by sending very long charsets.
Check this out:
^(([A-Za-z]+[,.]?[ ]?|[a-z]+['-]?)+)$
You can test it here : https://regex101.com/r/mS9gD7/46
I don't really have a whole lot to add to a regex that takes care of names because there are already some good suggestions here, but if you want a few resources for learning more about regular expressions, you should check out:
Regex Library's Cheat
Sheet
Another cheat sheet
A regex tutorial on the DevNetwork
forums: Part 1 and Part 2
PHP builder's tutorial
And if you ever need to do regex for
JavaScript (it's a little
different flavor), try JavaScript Kit,
or this resource, or Mozilla's
reference
I second the 'give up' advice. Even if you consider numbers, hyphens, apostrophes and such, something like [a-zA-Z] still wouldn't catch international names (for example, those having šđčćž, or Cyrillic alphabet, or Chinese characters...)
But... why are you even trying to verify names? What errors are you trying to catch? Don't you think people know to write their name better than you? ;) Seriously, the only thing you can do by trying to verify names is to irritate people with unusual names.
Basically, I agree with Paul... You will always find exceptions, like di Caprio, DeVil, or such.
Remarks on your message: in PHP, ereg is generally seen as obsolete (slow, incomplete) in favor of preg (PCRE regexes).
And you should try some regex tester, like the powerful Regex Coach: they are great to test quickly REs against arbitrary strings.
If you really need to solve your problem and aren't satisfied with above answers, just ask, I will give a go.
This worked for me:
+[a-z]{2,3} +[a-z]*|[\w'-]*
This regex will correctly match names such as the following:
jean-claude van damme
nadine arroyo-rodriquez
wayne la pierre
beverly d'angelo
billy-bob thornton
tito puente
susan del rio
It will group "van damme", "arroyo-rodriquez" "d'angelo", "billy-bob", etc. as well as the singular names like "wayne".
Note that it does not test that the grouped stuff is actually a valid name. Like others said, you'll need a dictionary for that. Also, it will group numbers, so if that's an issue you may want to modify the regex.
I wrote this to parse names for a MapReduce application. All I wanted was to extract words from the name field, grouping together the del foo and la bar and billy-bobs into one word to make the key-value pair generation more accurate.
^[A-Z][a-zA-Z '&-]*[A-Za-z]$
Will accept anything that starts with an uppercase letter, followed by zero or more of any letter, space, hyphen, ampersand or apostrophes, and ending with a letter.
See this question for more related "name-detection" related stuff.
regex to match a maximum of 4 spaces
Basically, you have a problem in that, there are effectively no characters in existence that can't form a legal name string.
If you are still limiting yourself to words without ä ü æ ß and other similar non-strictly-ascii characters.
Get yourself a copy of UTF32 character table and realise how many millions of valid characters there are that your simple regex would miss.
To add multiple dots in the username use this Regex:
^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*\.?[a-zA-Z0-9_\.]*$
String length can be set separately.
You can easily neutralize the whole matter of whether letters are upper or lowercase -- even in unexpected or uncommon locations -- by converting the string to all upper case using strtoupper() and then checking it against your regex.
/([\u00c0-\u01ffa-zA-Z'\-]+[ ]?[*]?[\u00c0-\u01ffa-zA-Z'\-]*)+/;
Try this . You can also force to start with char using ^,and end with char using $
To improve on daan's answer:
^([\u00c0-\u01ffa-zA-Z]+\b['\-]{0,1})+\b$
only allows a single occurances of hyphen or apostrophy within a-z and valid unicode chars.
also does a backtrack to make sure there is no hyphen or apostrophes at the end of the string.
^[A-Z][a-z]*(([,.] |[ '-])[A-Za-z][a-z]*)*(\.?)( [IVXLCDM]+)?$
For complete details, please visit THIS post. This regex doesn't allow ampersands.
if you add spaces then "He went to the market on Sunday" would be a valid name.
I don't think you can do this with a regex, you cannot easily detect names from a chunk of text using a regex, you would need a dictionary of approved names and search based on that. Any names not on the list wouldn't be detected.
I have used this, because name can be the part of file-patch.
//http://support.microsoft.com/kb/177506
foreach(array('/','\\',':','*','?','<','>','|') as $char)
if(strpos($name,$char)!==false)
die("Not allowed char: '$char'");
I ran into this same issue, and like many others that have posted, this isn't a 100% fool proof expression, but it's working for us.
/([\-'a-z]+\s?){2,4}/
This will check for any hyphens and/or apostrophes in either the first and/or last name as well as checking for a space between the first and last names. The last part is a little magic that will check for between 2 and 4 names. If you tend to have a lot of international users that may have 5 or even 6 names, you can change that to 5 or 6 and it should work for you.
i think "/^[a-zA-Z']+$/" is not enough it will allow to pass single letter we can adjust the range by adding {4,20} which means the range of letters are 4 to 20.
I've come up with this RegEx pattern for names:
/^([a-zA-Z]+[\s'.]?)+\S$/
It works. I think you should use it too.
It matches only names or strings like:
Dr. Shaquil O'Neil Armstrong Buzz-Aldrin
It won't match strings with 2 or more spaces like:
John Paul
It won't match strings with ending spaces like:
John Paul
The text above has an ending space. Try highlighting or selecting the text to see the space
Here's what I use to learn and create your own regex patterns:
RegExr: Leanr, Build and Test RegEx
Try this: /^([A-Z][a-z]([ ][a-z]+)([ '-]([&][ ])?[A-Z][a-z]+)*)$/
Demo: http://regexr.com/3bai1
Have a nice day !
you can use this below for names
^[a-zA-Z'-]{3,}\s[a-zA-Z'-]{3,}$
^ start of the string
$ end of the string
\s space
[a-zA-Z'-\s]{3,} will accept any name with a length of 3 characters or more, and it include names with ' or - like jean-luc
So in our case it will only accept names in 2 parts separated by a space
in case of multiple first-name you can add a \s
^[a-zA-Z'-\s]{3,}\s[a-zA-Z'-]{3,}$
Following Regex is simple and useful for proper names (Towns, Cities, First Name, Last Name) allowing all international letters omitting unicode-based regex engine.
It is flexible - you can add/remove characters you want in the expression (focusing on characters you want to reject rather than include).
^(?:(?!^\s|[ \-']{2}|[\d\r\n\t\f\v!"#$%&()*+,\.\/:;<=>?#[\\\]^_`{|}~€‚ƒ„…†‡ˆ‰‹‘’“”•–—˜™›¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿×÷№′″ⁿ⁺⁰‱₁₂₃₄]|\s$).){1,50}$
Regex matches: from 1 to 50 international letters separated by single delimiter (space -')
Regex rejects: empty prefix/suffix, consecutive delimiters (space - '), digits, new line, tab, limited list of extended ASCII characters
Demo
This is what I use for full name:
$pattern = "/^((\p{Lu}{1})\S(\p{Ll}{1,20})[^0-9])+[-'\s]((\p{Lu}{1})\S(\p{Ll}{1,20}))*[^0-9]$/u";
Supports all languages
Common names("Jane Doe", "John Doe")
Usefull for composed names("Marie-Josée Côté-Rochon", "Bill O'reilly")
Excludes digits(0-9)
Only excepts uppercase at beginning of names
First and last names from 2-21 characters
Adding trim() to remove whitespace
Does not except("John J. William", "Francis O'reilly Jr. III")
Must use full names, not: ("John", "Jane", "O'reilly", "Smith")
Edit:
It seems that both [^0-9] in the pattern above was matching at least a fourth digit/letter in each of either first and/or last names.
Therefore names of three letters/digits could not be matched.
Here is the edited regular expression:
$pattern = "/^(\p{Lu}{1}\S\p{Ll}{1,20}[-'\s]\p{Lu}{1}\S\p{Ll}{1,20})+([^\d]+)$/u";
Give up. Every rule you can think of has exceptions in some culture or other. Even if that "culture" is geeks who like legally change their names to "37eet".
Try this regex:
^[a-zA-Z'-\s\.]{3,20}\s[a-zA-Z'-\.]{3,20}$
Aomine's answer was quite helpful, I tweaked it a bit to include:
Names with dots (middle): Jane J. Samuels
Names with dots at the end: John Simms Snr.
Also the name will accept minimum 2 letters, and a min. of 2 letters for surname but no more than 20 for each (so total of 40 characters)
Successful Test cases:
D'amalia Jones
David Silva Jnr.
Jay-Silva Thompson
Shay .J. Muhanned
Bob J. Iverson
Related
I have a regex in PHP that replaces everything I don't want with spaces
/[^a-z0-9\p{L}]/siu
But there is this one exception, I want to keep punctuations for abbreviations.
Example:
F.B.I.Federal.Bureau.of.Investigation => 'F B I Federal Bureau of
Investigation'
S.W.A.T.Team => 'S W A T Team'
Should be:
F.B.I.Federal.Bureau.of.Investigation => 'F.B.I. Federal Bureau of
Investigation'
S.W.A.T.Team => 'S.W.A.T. Team'
PHP code:
$s = "F.B.I.Federal.Bureau.of.Investigation";
return preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9\p{L}]/siu', " ", $s);
so the logic is, that it should check the second char of first match, and if it's an '.' char, then don't replace.
Not sure if this is possible with regex, then I would appreciate an alternative with PHP.
Actually, there are many types of abbreviations, and as Jon Stirling says, there is no really 100% working solution here since you need a whole list of possible abbreviations to filter out. You may have a peek at some fancy regex solution by #ndn and grab the pattern part related to abbreviations there.
If you need to only handle patterns like in the question, you may consider using
'~(\b(?:\p{Lu}\.){2,})|[^0-9\p{L}]~u'
or - if D.Word should also be treated as an abbreviation:
'~(\b(?:\p{Lu}\.)+)|[^0-9\p{L}]~u'
and replace with '$1 '. See the regex demo.
Pattern details:
(\b(?:\p{Lu}\.)+) - Group 1 (later referenced with $1 backreference): 1 or more consequent occurrences of any Unicode uppercase letter and a dot after it
| - or
[^0-9\p{L}] - any char that is not an ASCII digit and a Unicode letter.
And here is a variant of a regex with #ndn's abbreviations:
'~\b((?:[Ee]tc|St|Gen|Hon|Prof|Dr|Mr|Ms|Mrs|[JS]r|Col|Maj|Brig|Sgt|Capt|Cmnd|Sen|Rev|Rep|Revd|pp|[Vv]iz|i\.?\s*e|[Vvol]|[Rr]col|maj|Lt|[Ff]ig|[Ff]igs|[Vv]iz|[Vv]ols|[Aa]pprox|[Ii]ncl|Pres|[Dd]ept|min|max|[Gg]ovt|lb|ft|c\.?\s*f|vs|\p{Lu}(?:\.\p{Lu})+)\.)|[^0-9\p{L}]~'
See the regex demo.
If you do not want to remove -, ( and ), just make sure to add them to the negated character class, replace [^0-9\p{L}] with [^0-9\p{L}()-].
Feel free to update by adding more abbreviations or enhance by shrinking the alternatives.
I want to check is the name valid with regex PHP, but i need a unique regex that allows:
Letters (upper and lowercase)
Spaces (max 2)
But there can't be a space after space..
For example:
Name -> Dennis Unge Shishic (valid)
Name -> Denis(space)(space) (not valid)
Hope you guys understand me, thank you :)
First, it's worth mentioning that having such restrictive rules for the names of persons is a very bad idea. However, if you must, a simple character class like this will limit you to just uppercase and lowercase English letters:
[A-Za-z]
To match one or more, you need to add a + after it. So, this will match the first part of the name:
[A-Za-z]+
To capture a second name, you just need to do the same thing preceded by a space, so something like this will capture two names:
[A-Za-z]+ [A-Za-z]+
To make the second name optional, you need to surround it by parentheses and add a ? after it, like this:
[A-Za-z]+( [A-Za-z]+)?
And to add a third name, you just need to do it again:
[A-Za-z]+( [A-Za-z]+)? [A-Za-z]+
Or, you could specify that the latter names can repeat between 1 and 2 times, like this:
[A-Za-z]+( [A-Za-z]+){1,2}
To make the resulting code easy to understand and maintain, you could use two Regex. One checking (by requiring it to be true) that only the allowed characters are used ^[a-zA-Z ]+$ and then another one, checking (by requiring it to be false) that there are no two (or more) adjacent spaces ( ){2,}
Try following working code:
Change input to whatever you want to test and see correct validation result printed
<?php
$input_line = "Abhishek Gupta";
preg_match("/[a-zA-Z ]+/", $input_line, $nameMatch);
preg_match("/\s{2,}/", $input_line, $multiSpace);
var_dump($nameMatch);
var_dump($multiSpace);
if(count($nameMatch)>0){
if(count($multiSpace)>0){
echo "Invalid Name Multispace";
}
else{
echo "Valid Name";
}
}
else{
echo "Invalid Name";
}
?>
A regex for one to three words consisting of only Unicode letters in PHP looks like
/^\p{L}+(?:\h\p{L}+){1,2}\z/u
Description:
^ - string start
\p{L}+ - one or more Unicode letters
(?:\h\p{L}+){1,2} - one or two sequences of a horizontal whitespace followed with one or more Unicode letters
\z - end of string, even disallowing trailing newline that a dollar anchor allows.
I try to create a regular expression with searches in a huge document for a persons full name. In the text the name can be written in full, or the first names can be either abbreviated to a single letter or a letter followed by a dot or omitted. For instance my search for _ALBERTO JORGE ALONSO CALEFACCION_now is:
preg_match('/([;:.,&\s\xc2\-(){}!"'<>]{1})(ALBERTO|A.|A)[\s\xc2-]+
(JORGE|J.|J)?[\s\xc2,]+(ALONSO)[\s\xc2*-]+(CALEFACCION))([;:.,&\s\xc2(){}
!"'<>]{1})/i', $text, $match);
Between the first names and last names an asterisk (*) can be present.
This is working for the case all first names are at least present some way. But I don't know to extend the expression when first names are omitted. Can you help me?
Let's start by simplifying what you have;
start:
/([;:.,&\s\xc2\-(){}!"'<>]{1})(ALBERTO|A.|A)[\s\xc2-]+(JORGE|J.|J)?[\s\xc2,]+(ALONSO)[\s\xc2*-]+(CALEFACCION)([;:.,&\s\xc2(){}!"'<>]{1})/i
as I said in my comment, \b is "word break", so you can simplify a lot of that:
/\b(ALBERTO|A.|A)[\s\xc2-]+(JORGE|J.|J)?[\s\xc2,]+(ALONSO)[\s\xc2*-]+(CALEFACCION)\b/i
(added bonus: it won't match the characters either side now, and it will match at the start and end of the text)
Next, you can use the ? token for the dots (which should be escaped by the way; . is special and means "match anything")
/\b(ALBERTO|A\.?)[\s\xc2-]+(JORGE|J\.?)?[\s\xc2,]+(ALONSO)[\s\xc2*-]+(CALEFACCION)\b/i
Finally, to actually answer your question, you have 2 choices. Either make the entire bracketed name optional, or add a new blank option. The first is the most flexible, since we'll need to cope with the whitespace too:
/\b((ALBERTO|A\.?)[\s\xc2-]+((JORGE|J\.?)[\s\xc2,]+)?)?(ALONSO)[\s\xc2*-]+(CALEFACCION)\b/i
Note that if you're reading the matched parts you'll need to update your indices. Also note that this fixed an issue where omitting the second name (JORGE) still required an extra space.
This will match things like A. J. ALONSO CALEFACCION, A. ALONSO CALEFACCION and ALONSO CALEFACCION, but not J. ALONSO CALEFACCION (it's only a small tweak if you do want that)
Breaking up that final string for clarity:
/\b
(
(ALBERTO|A\.?)[\s\xc2-]+
(
(JORGE|J\.?)[\s\xc2,]+
)?
)?
(ALONSO)[\s\xc2*-]+
(CALEFACCION)
\b/i
Finally, it's an odd thought, but you could change the names which can be initials to be in this form: (A(LBERTO|\.|)), which means you're not repeating the initials (a potential source of mistakes)
I'm trying to make a function to verify names on PHP using Regex, I want the names to be able to carry infinite amount of spaces and ' and -, and to allow only capital characters after spaces but to allow capital and none capitals after - and '.. Also the total length should be of 50 characters and the name should end with a lowercase, note that the uppercases are A to Z plus those characters :
ÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ
and the lower cases are a to z plus those characters :
éçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß
each word (between a space , ' or - and another) should count at least 2 characters the name should also start with an uppercase and finish with a lower case and in words (between a space , ' or - and another) no uppercases but that of the beginning is allowed
Examples of acceptable names are :
Adam Klsld
Adam'odskdl
Adam'Ddlsl
Ùdam-ddkkdk
Addssd-Ddsdsd
I've been trying a lot but here's my last try that I still keep in my php file, the others I've deleted in the chaos of non-successful attempts (using mb_ereg function to match, so this is a posix-ere):
([A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ][a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+){1}((^[\'\-\s])[A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ][a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+)*
(this does not necessarily mean it's the best attempt but I though it may help and give an idea on how much of a dork am I)
I wouldn't exactly suggest you use this... but I think this does what you want?
^([A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ][a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+){1}((([\s])[A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ][a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+)|((['\-])([A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ]|[a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß])[a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+))*$
Here it is in a non-code block so you can see how insane it is... think it strips some characters here though:
^([A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ][a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+){1}((([\s])[A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ][a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+)|((['-])([A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ]|[a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß])[a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]+))*$
Is this Regex answering what you need to check ?
(You'll have to add the weird characters inside each brackets of course).
You can use this to avoid accented characters issue:
$pattern = "~^[\p{Lu}ß]\p{Ll}*+(?>(?> [\p{Lu}ß]|['-]\p{L})\p{Ll}*+)*$~u";
if(preg_match($pattern, $name)) { ...
Or for a more specific set of characters:
$pattern = "~(?(DEFINE)(?<Up>[A-ZÙÒÌÈÀÁÉÍßÓÚÝÂÊÎÔÛÃÑÕÄÅÆŒÇÐØËÏÖÜŸ]))
(?(DEFINE)(?<Lo>[a-zéçàèàèìòùáéíóúýâêîôûãñõäëïöüÿåæœçðøß]))
^\g<Up>\g<Lo>*+(?>(?>\h\g<Up>|['-]\g<Up>?+\g<Lo>)\g<Lo>*+)*+$~ux";
if (preg_match($pattern, $name, $matches)) { ...
or the same in a shorter way:
$pattern = "~(?(DEFINE)(?<Up>[A-ZÀ-ÖØ-ݟߌ]))
(?(DEFINE)(?<Lo>[a-zà-öø-ýÿßœ]))
^\g<Up>\g<Lo>*+(?>(?>\h\g<Up>|['-]\g<Up>?+\g<Lo>)\g<Lo>*+)*+$~ux";
I'd like to know a regex that would validate:
an email address to this form: 234903284#student.uws.edu.au
couple issues:
"student." is optional and could be any word eg "teacher.".
"324234234" can be any alpha numeric characters (number, word, _ etc.)
the email must end in "uws.edu.au"
This is what I have so far:
/(\d*)#\w*\.uws\.edu\.au/
valid addresses:
me#uws.edu.au
234234324#student.uws.edu.au
theking#teacher.uws.edu.au
etc.
Thanks Guys
Three thoughts:
Change the initial \d to \w to match "word" characters [a-zA-Z0-9_] instead of just digits.
Make the subdomain optional using ?
Use + instead of * when matching the username and subdomain. Otherwise #.uws.edu.au will validate.
Suggested:
/\w+#(\w+\.)?uws\.edu\.au/
You said:
Just tried /(\w*)#(\w*.)?uws.edu.au/ and that seemed to work. Any further suggestions are welcome – Jason 4 secs ago
Your regex will match "#teacher.uws.edu.au" (i.e. "name portion" omitted).
To fix this, you could use:
/(\w+)#(\w+\.)?uws\.edu\.au/
Which will require at least one character in the name portion, and at least one char before the dot (if there is a dot) in the subdomain spot.
Also (I think) that \w will not match . (and probably other chars that you care about in the name portion too), so bob.jones#student.uws.edu.au would fail to match. The following would add the char ., _, and - into the "name" portion:
/([\w\._-]+)#(\w*\.)?uws\.edu\.au/
you could add any other chars you need in the same way.
NOTE: Matching email addresses in general a more complex thing than you might think (lots of strange things are technically allowed in email addresses. Here is an article on the subject (There are many other sources of similar information available).