Question

I created this regular expression to validate names:

^[a-zA-Z0-9\s\-\,]+.\*?$

Is there a way add the minimum number of characters?

I know we can use {x,}, but I cannot make it work.

Answer 1

{x,} should be used instead of + here…

^[a-zA-Z0-9\s,-]{5,}

But this would mean, "at least 5 characters in the beginning match those from the character class, and then anything…

If you write it like this (almost your original – just with {5,} instead of +):

^[a-zA-Z0-9\s\-\,]{5,}.\*?$

This means "at least 5 characters in the beginning match those from the character class, and any one character, and then optionally an asterisk, and that should be the end of it".