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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T13:07:42+00:00

I had this regex in java that matched either an alphanumeric character or the

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I had this regex in java that matched either an alphanumeric character or the tilde (~)

^([a-z0-9])+|~$

Now I have to add also the characters - and _ I’ve tried a few combinations, neither of which work, for example:

^([a-zA-Z0-9_-])+|~$
^([a-zA-Z0-9]|-|_)+|~$

Sample input strings that must match:

woZOQNVddd

00000

ncnW0mL14-

dEowBO_Eu7

7MyG4XqFz-

A8ft-y6hDu
~

Any clues / suggestion?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    - is a special character within square brackets. It indicates a range. If it’s not at either end of the regex it needs to be escaped by putting a \ before it.

    It’s worth pointing out a shortcut: \w is equivalent to [0-9a-zA-Z_] so I think this is more readable:

    ^([\w-]+|~$
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