Question

I would like to use regular expression to check if my string have the format like following:

mc_834faisd88979asdfas8897asff8790ds_oa_ids
mc_834fappsd58979asdfas8897asdf879ds_oa_ids
mc_834faispd8fs9asaas4897asdsaf879ds_oa_ids
mc_834faisd8dfa979asdfaspo97asf879ds_dv_ids
mc_834faisd111979asdfas88mp7asf879ds_dv_ids
mc_834fais00979asdfas8897asf87ggg9ds_dv_ids

The format is like mc_<random string>_oa_ids or mc_<random string>_dv_ids . How can I check if my string is in either of these two formats? And please explain the regular expression. thank you.

That’s a string start with mc_, while end with _oa_ids or dv_ids, and have some random string in the middle.

P.S. the random string consists of alpha-beta letters and numbers.

What I tried(I have no clue how to check the random string):

/^mc_834faisd88979asdfas8897asff8790ds$_os_ids/

Answer 1

Try this.

^mc_[0-9a-z]+_(dv|oa)_ids$

^           matches at the start of the line the regex pattern is applied to. 
[0-9a-z]    matces alphabetic and numeric chars.
+           means that there should be one or more chars in this set
(dv|oa)     matches dv or oa
$           matches at the end of the string the regex pattern is applied to. 
     also matches before the very last line break if the string ends with a line break.