Question

I’m looking for a regex for validating phone numbers.

Here is what I’d like my regex to validate:

• Must be 14 to 17 characters in length
• Must be all digits and contain 3 hyphens

Accepted formats:

5-555-555-5555
55-55-555-5555
55-555-555-5555
555-555-555-5555
5555-555-555-5555

My current code looks like this:

^.*(?=.{14,17})(?=.*\-{3,})(?=.*[\d\-]).*$

It is allowing more than 3 hyphens and the length is being allowed to exceed 17 characters.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Here is an ugly brute force version that simply lists the 4 valid formats explicitly:

^(\d-\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4})|(\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{3}-\d{4})|(\d{2}-(\d{3}-){2}\d{4})|((\d{3}-){3}\d{4}$)|(^\d{4}-(\d{3}-){2}\d{4})$

Here is the Rubular link.