Help with regex HTML form validation Part 2
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Hi, Now I need a pattern to detect last name possibilities. I think this pattern will be slightly more complicated. Names that I see in the database are like: Jones Jones-Smith Jones Smith (no hyphen) O'Leary Van Allen (no hyphen) Vander Ark (no hyphen) I think that this pattern will work but I would like public opinion to make sure I am getting this right: ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+$ Can you think of any last names where this will not work? In testing it seems to work out alright. Thanks, Rob
Don't forget the characters that include diacritical marks. E.g., ö Å ç
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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Don't forget the characters that include diacritical marks. E.g., ö Å ç
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
Is there a way to check for that without having to list every Unicode character? I didn't see any accented names in our database but that certainly doesn't mean it can't happen in the future. I'd prefer to not include all Unicode characters. Just the ones with a high likelihood of showing up. I imagine that it could only be characters that would be accepted by Active Directory.
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Is there a way to check for that without having to list every Unicode character? I didn't see any accented names in our database but that certainly doesn't mean it can't happen in the future. I'd prefer to not include all Unicode characters. Just the ones with a high likelihood of showing up. I imagine that it could only be characters that would be accepted by Active Directory.
At least with the .NET Regex http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/20bw873z(v=vs.110).aspx#CategoryOrBlock[^] (I don't know about others) you can specify the Unicode character category (for "Letter") so your regex would be:
^[\p{Ll}\p{Lu}\p{Lt}\p{Lo}\p{Lm}\-\s']+$
possibly even just
^[\p{L}\-\s']+$
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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At least with the .NET Regex http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/20bw873z(v=vs.110).aspx#CategoryOrBlock[^] (I don't know about others) you can specify the Unicode character category (for "Letter") so your regex would be:
^[\p{Ll}\p{Lu}\p{Lt}\p{Lo}\p{Lm}\-\s']+$
possibly even just
^[\p{L}\-\s']+$
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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After looking at that link, a person could go crazy trying to catch every possibility. Looks like regex can be very thorough! Thanks for the help!
Yes!! There's a reason the "Mastering Regular Expressions" book[^] is 496 pages!!! :omg:
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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At least with the .NET Regex http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/20bw873z(v=vs.110).aspx#CategoryOrBlock[^] (I don't know about others) you can specify the Unicode character category (for "Letter") so your regex would be:
^[\p{Ll}\p{Lu}\p{Lt}\p{Lo}\p{Lm}\-\s']+$
possibly even just
^[\p{L}\-\s']+$
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
How would you allow for a period only at the end of the string where in the case a name ends in Jr. or Sr.? A period wouldn't normally appear in any other position in a last name. I'm going with the pattern below so far. I'm double checking names in Active Directory but I'm reasonably sure you can't use diacritical characters. I need to research that to be certain. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+$
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How would you allow for a period only at the end of the string where in the case a name ends in Jr. or Sr.? A period wouldn't normally appear in any other position in a last name. I'm going with the pattern below so far. I'm double checking names in Active Directory but I'm reasonably sure you can't use diacritical characters. I need to research that to be certain. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+$
^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.$
Add the
\.right before the$A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.$
Add the
\.right before the$A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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How would you allow for a period only at the end of the string where in the case a name ends in Jr. or Sr.? A period wouldn't normally appear in any other position in a last name. I'm going with the pattern below so far. I'm double checking names in Active Directory but I'm reasonably sure you can't use diacritical characters. I need to research that to be certain. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+$
I'd be awfully surprised if the only characters allowed in Active Directory worldwide are the basic ASCII-ish letters.
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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I'd be awfully surprised if the only characters allowed in Active Directory worldwide are the basic ASCII-ish letters.
A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
I know we have a least one person that has an accented 'e' in their last name but it's not that way in Active Directory. I don't know if that is due the person making the entry didn't know how to make the accented character or it was disallowed. I'll definitely research to be sure before I make a final decision to leave it out. I will post my findings here.
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^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.$
Add the
\.right before the$A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
Well, this pattern was working yesterday on a different computer at work. I installed Expresso on my personal computer so I could work on my project over the weekend and now the pattern is not working. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.$ john1 = no matches The pattern should match the number one because numbers are not allowed but the results are blank when I run this pattern. I could have sworn that this was working yesterday. EDIT: I did some further testing and discovered that the \. is breaking the pattern. If there is no period at the end; then count = 0. This pattern seems to require the period at the end and then it works correctly. The period should be allowed 0 or 1 times at the end of the string. So the pattern below is working the way I want it to in Expresso but not when I use it in an HTA using vbscript to do the pattern matching. Vbscript is throwing an error at the line where the pattern is executed. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+?\.$ Not sure how to make a pattern that works in Expresso to also work with vbscript. SOLUTION: ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+?\.$ This pattern works when testing in Expresso but doesn't work with vbscript although this may work when used with other languages. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.{0,1}$ This is the pattern that behaves the same way as the pattern above but also works with vbscript. MATCHES: Jones Jones-Smith Jones Smith (no hyphen) O'Leary Van Allen (no hyphen) Vander Ark (no hyphen) Jones Sr. Although this doesn't address diacritical characters, a few conversations with colleagues resulted in the decision that the risk is very low that they will be used in Active Directory. We currently have only 3 techs making entries into AD so informing them of how this pattern works will reduce the risk even further. I have worked for my organization for 14 years and no diacritical characters have been used until now so I feel pretty safe in not testing for them. It may not be the ultimate approach such as selling a product to the public but it does meet the needs of the specifications that were given to me. Thank you! - I'd like to give a shout out to everyone who helped me out with this project! I really appreciate all of you taking the time to steer me in the right direction! I would go as far as to say that CodeProject could be just as valuable as sitting in any classroom. You may not get a certification here but the knowledge gained is invaluable. I was able to gain a solid understanding of regex in a matter of a few hours. I watched several videos but I wo
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Well, this pattern was working yesterday on a different computer at work. I installed Expresso on my personal computer so I could work on my project over the weekend and now the pattern is not working. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.$ john1 = no matches The pattern should match the number one because numbers are not allowed but the results are blank when I run this pattern. I could have sworn that this was working yesterday. EDIT: I did some further testing and discovered that the \. is breaking the pattern. If there is no period at the end; then count = 0. This pattern seems to require the period at the end and then it works correctly. The period should be allowed 0 or 1 times at the end of the string. So the pattern below is working the way I want it to in Expresso but not when I use it in an HTA using vbscript to do the pattern matching. Vbscript is throwing an error at the line where the pattern is executed. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+?\.$ Not sure how to make a pattern that works in Expresso to also work with vbscript. SOLUTION: ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+?\.$ This pattern works when testing in Expresso but doesn't work with vbscript although this may work when used with other languages. ^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.{0,1}$ This is the pattern that behaves the same way as the pattern above but also works with vbscript. MATCHES: Jones Jones-Smith Jones Smith (no hyphen) O'Leary Van Allen (no hyphen) Vander Ark (no hyphen) Jones Sr. Although this doesn't address diacritical characters, a few conversations with colleagues resulted in the decision that the risk is very low that they will be used in Active Directory. We currently have only 3 techs making entries into AD so informing them of how this pattern works will reduce the risk even further. I have worked for my organization for 14 years and no diacritical characters have been used until now so I feel pretty safe in not testing for them. It may not be the ultimate approach such as selling a product to the public but it does meet the needs of the specifications that were given to me. Thank you! - I'd like to give a shout out to everyone who helped me out with this project! I really appreciate all of you taking the time to steer me in the right direction! I would go as far as to say that CodeProject could be just as valuable as sitting in any classroom. You may not get a certification here but the knowledge gained is invaluable. I was able to gain a solid understanding of regex in a matter of a few hours. I watched several videos but I wo
robwm1 wrote:
^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+?\.$
This was so.... close. When I suggested the
\.I forgot the conditional aspect of the the dot at the end. (Sorry.) Just move the?to be after the\.^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.?$
the
?means exactly the same thing as{0,1}A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.
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robwm1 wrote:
^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+?\.$
This was so.... close. When I suggested the
\.I forgot the conditional aspect of the the dot at the end. (Sorry.) Just move the?to be after the\.^[a-zA-Z\-\s']+\.?$
the
?means exactly the same thing as{0,1}A positive attitude may not solve every problem, but it will annoy enough people to be worth the effort.