Question

I’d like to use the regex

%[ _]play[ ,_]%

where % is denotes allows some arbitrary string to appear. For example, I’d want to check that this regex appears in some where in some string. Is this valid?

Answer 1

No, it is not valid. The easiest way would be to simply remove the percentage signs, because a string doesn’t need to match the specified regex exclusively.

This regex:

[ _]play[ ,_]

will match this string:

ABC play,DEF