Question

I have the following REGEX that I’m serving up to java via an xml file.

[a-zA-Z -\(\) \-]+

This regex is used to validate server side and client side (via javascript) and works pretty well at allowing only alphabetic content and a few other characters…

My problem is that it will also allow zero lenth strings / empty through.

Does anyone have a simple and yet elegant solution to this?

I already tried…

[a-zA-Z -\(\) \-]{1,}+

but that didn;t seem to work.

Cheers!

UPDATE FOLLOWING INVESTIGATION

It appears the code I provided does in fact work…

String inputStr = " ";
    String pattern = "[a-zA-Z -\\(\\) \\-]+";
    boolean patternMatched = java.util.regex.Pattern.matches(pattern, inputStr);
    if ( patternMatched ){
        out.println("Pattern MATCHED");
    }else{
        out.println("NOT MATCHED"); 
    }

After looking at this more closely I think the problem may well be within the logic of some of my java bean coding… It appears the regex is dropped out at the point where the string parse should take place, thereby allowing empty strings to be submitted… And also any other string… EEJIT that I am…

Cheers for the help in peer reviewing my initial stupid though….!

Answer 1

Have you tried this:

[a-zA-Z -\(\) \-]+