Question

I want a regular expression that accepts all numbers, alphabets and only the hyphen (‐) from special characters.

I am trying this expression: ^\d+$/[-]/[a-z] but it does not work. I want to accept expressions like this one:

Emp-IN-0000001

Can someone help me with this?

Answer 1

If it’s always this format (Emp-IN-0000001), then use this regexp:

^[a-zA-Z]+-[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]-[0-9]+$

or, if you have extended regexps:

^[a-zA-Z]+-[a-zA-Z]{2}-\d+$

when there are always seven digits, use this:

^[a-zA-Z]+-[a-zA-Z]{2}-\d{7}$

You can even say:

^Emp-IN-\d{7}$

if it’s exactly “Emp-IN-” + digits.

Btw, this is not C# specific, you can use these regular expressions with any language, as long as they support regexps at all.