Matching special characters and letters in regex
Add them to the allowed characters, but you'll need to escape some of them, such as -]/\
var pattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9!@#$%^&*()_+\-=\[\]{};':"\\|,.<>\/?]*$/
That way you can remove any individual character you want to disallow.
Also, you want to include the start and end of string placemarkers ^ and $
Update:
As elclanrs understood (and the rest of us didn't, initially), the only special characters needing to be allowed in the pattern are &-._
/^[\w&.\-]+$/
[\w] is the same as [a-zA-Z0-9_]
Though the dash doesn't need escaping when it's at the start or end of the list, I prefer to do it in case other characters are added. Additionally, the + means you need at least one of the listed characters. If zero is ok (ie an empty value), then replace it with a * instead:
/^[\w&.\-]*$/
Well, why not just add them to your existing character class?
var pattern = /[a-zA-Z0-9&._-]/
If you need to check whether a string consists of nothing but those characters you have to anchor the expression as well:
var pattern = /^[a-zA-Z0-9&._-]+$/
The added ^
and $
match the beginning and end of the string respectively.
Testing for letters, numbers or underscore can be done with \w
which shortens your expression:
var pattern = /^[\w&.-]+$/
As mentioned in the comment from Nathan, if you're not using the results from .match()
(it returns an array with what has been matched), it's better to use RegExp.test()
which returns a simple boolean:
if (pattern.test(qry)) {
// qry is non-empty and only contains letters, numbers or special characters.
}
Update 2
In case I have misread the question, the below will check if all three separate conditions are met.
if (/[a-zA-Z]/.test(qry) && /[0-9]/.test(qry) && /[&._-]/.test(qry)) {
// qry contains at least one letter, one number and one special character
}
Try this regex:
/^[\w&.-]+$/
Also you can use test
.
if ( pattern.test( qry ) ) {
// valid
}