Question

I need to test whether a list of zip codes in a textarea has only 5-digit zip codes. Under normal circumstances the list would look like this:

56228, 56243, 55324, 55325, 55329, 55355, 55389

I need to find out if there is anything but the above pattern in the textarea. There can be any number of individual zip codes, but I need to make sure there isn’t anything else. (I think I’m going to need to be able to highlight illegal matches in the textarea also, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it).

I started with this regex:

^\d{5},?\s?$+

I’m very new to building regular expressions, but as I understand it, the above should match any set of 5 digits, and commas and whitespace after the five digits may or may not be there.

Online regex testers (I’ve tried several) aren’t finding any matches, whether I have a legitimate list of zip codes or a list with “illegal” characters.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

This one should suit your needs:

^([, ]*\d{5})+[, ]*$