Searching for UUIDs in text with regex

If you want to check or validate a specific UUID version, here are the corresponding regexes.

Note that the only difference is the version number, which is explained in 4.1.3. Version chapter of UUID 4122 RFC.

The version number is the first character of the third group : [VERSION_NUMBER][0-9A-F]{3} :

  • UUID v1 :

    /^[0-9A-F]{8}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[1][0-9A-F]{3}-[89AB][0-9A-F]{3}-[0-9A-F]{12}$/i

  • UUID v2 :

    /^[0-9A-F]{8}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[2][0-9A-F]{3}-[89AB][0-9A-F]{3}-[0-9A-F]{12}$/i

  • UUID v3 :

    /^[0-9A-F]{8}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[3][0-9A-F]{3}-[89AB][0-9A-F]{3}-[0-9A-F]{12}$/i

  • UUID v4 :

    /^[0-9A-F]{8}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[4][0-9A-F]{3}-[89AB][0-9A-F]{3}-[0-9A-F]{12}$/i

  • UUID v5 :

    /^[0-9A-F]{8}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[5][0-9A-F]{3}-[89AB][0-9A-F]{3}-[0-9A-F]{12}$/i

The regex for uuid is:

[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}

If you want to enforce the full string to match this regex, you will sometimes (your matcher API may have a method) need to surround above expression with ^...$, that is

^[0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12}$

Version 4 UUIDs have the form xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx where x is any hexadecimal digit and y is one of 8, 9, A, or B. e.g. f47ac10b-58cc-4372-a567-0e02b2c3d479.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuid#Definition

Therefore, this is technically more correct:

/[a-f0-9]{8}-[a-f0-9]{4}-4[a-f0-9]{3}-[89aAbB][a-f0-9]{3}-[a-f0-9]{12}/

@ivelin: UUID can have capitals. So you'll either need to toLowerCase() the string or use:

[a-fA-F0-9]{8}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{4}-[a-fA-F0-9]{12}

Would have just commented this but not enough rep :)

Tags:

Regex

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