Question

I’m a real regex n00b so I ask your help:
I need a regex witch match only letters and numbers and exclude punctations, non ascii characters and spaces.

“ilikestackoverflow2012” would be a valid string.

“f### you °§è” not valid.

“hello world” not valid

“hello-world” and “*hello_world*” not valid

and so on.

I need it to make a possibly complex business name url friendly.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Try this:

var regex = new Regex(@"^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$");
var test = new[] {"ilikestack", "hello world", "hello-world", "###"};

foreach (var s in test)
   Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", s, regex.IsMatch(s));

EDIT: If you want something like @Andre_Miller said, you should use the same regex with Regex.Replace();

Regex.Replace(s, @"[^a-zA-Z0-9]+", "")

OR

var regex = new Regex(@"^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$");
regex.Replace("input-string-@#$@#");