Question

In my web application, I want the user to enter only SELECT statements. I am using the following regex to validate the entry.

(^(?i)select.+)(\\w|\\W)

The above code makes sure the entry should start with SELECT and then a WHITESPACE
(Example: SELECT * FROM TABLE1)
But when the user have the ‘ENTER’ key while creating query, the regex fails.
So I want the REGEX to all ‘ENTER’ key. Can anyone please tell me the syntax for REGEX to allow the user to use ‘ENTER’ key in text area?

Answer 1

Small aside: Your code does nothing to ensure a whitespace after SELECT because the dot matches any character except newlines.

But now, to answer your question: You need the (?s) flag to allow the dot to also match newlines. Plus, you should use a \s token to assert the presence of whitespace. The trailing (\w|\W) is rather mysterious – it matches any character, too…

So I would suggest this:

"^(?is)select\\s.*"

or even

"^(?i)select\\s"

because that’s already enough to check if the string starts with SELECT<space>.