Question

I have a regex to validate the amount entered in a field: /^\d+(\.\d+)?$/

Can I somehow compound the expression such that I can check for the total no.of characters entered? It should allow for a max of 13 characters (with/without decimal)

Answer 1

Sure, just add a lookahead assertion at the start:

/^(?=.{0,13}$)\d+(\.\d+)?$/

^(?=.{0,13}$) makes sure that there are between 0 and 13 characters between start and end of string. It doesn’t actually match and consume any of those characters, so the following part of the regex can then do the validation.

Another way would be

/^(?!.{14})\d+(\.\d+)?$/

Here, (?!.{14}) asserts that it’s impossible to match 14 characters at the start of the string, thereby ensuring a length maximum of 13.

Other variations on this theme:

/^(?=.{13})\d+(\.\d+)?$/         # more than 12 characters
/^(?=.{6}$|.{8}$)\d+(\.\d+)?$/   # 6 or 8 characters