Question

I am trying to search a string for email addresses, but my regex does not work, when the string contains other characters than the email. Meaning, if I try on a small string like “[e-mail]”, the regex finds a match. If I insert a blank space in the string, like: ” [e-mail]”, the regex does not find an email match.

Here is my code(the regex pattern is from the web):

            string emailpattern = @"^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\""]+"

                    + @"(\.[^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\""]+)*)|(\"".+\""))@"

                    + @"((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}"

                    + @"\.[0-9]{1,3}\])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+"

                    + @"[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$";
            Regex rEmail = new Regex(emailpattern);
            string str = @" [e-mail]";
            MatchCollection mcolResults = rEmail.Matches(str);
            MessageBox.Show(mcolResults.Count.ToString());

Please let me know what am I doing wrong.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Answer 1

^ and $ mean (respectively) the start and end of the input text (or line in multi-line mode) – generally used to check that the entire text (or line) matches the pattern. So if you don’t want that, take them away.