Regex Track1 Magnetic Stripe

Question

How can I create regex rule for name in Track1, following these rules:

Allowed Characters would be: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789 .()-$
Not Allowed Characters would be: ^!"&'*+,:;<=>@_[]#%?
Required character - only must character / appear
The max size is 26 characters , min size 2.

I tried:

\^[^\^!"&'*+,:;<=>@_\[\]\\#%?]{2,26}\^ Result FAIL: removing "/" will pass pattern 
\^([-.()0-9a-zA-Z]*\/[-.()\w\s\/]*){1,26}\^ Result FAIL: more than 26 characters will pass pattern
^[-.()\w\s\/]{2,26}\^ Result FAIL: removing "/" will pass pattern

Sample of Name in Track1:

^TEST/TEST^- Should Pass
^TEST TEST^- Should Fail
^TEST/TE/ST^ - Should Fail
^TEST/TE+ST^ - Should Fail

Thanks!

Why do you need to do this with a regular expression? Validating the total length of the field would be challenging while also ensuring presence of a single character. Much simpler to do with a programming language of some sort. — miken32, Jul 14 '22 at 23:08
I can do that of course. I thought it would be better to create one regex rule handling it. — CodingMerc, Jul 15 '22 at 05:53
Well, come back to your 1000 character regex in a year and see if it makes sense to you. Shorter != better. — miken32, Jul 15 '22 at 14:18

The fourth bird · Accepted Answer · 2022-07-15T07:01:03.390

If there has to be at least ^ at the start and end, and there has to be at least a single / then the minimum amount of characters would be 3 instead of 2.

In that case, you might use:

\^(?=[A-Z .()\/-]{1,24}\^)[A-Z .()-]*\/[A-Z .()-]*\^

Explanation

\^ Match ^
(?=[A-Z .()\/-]{1,24}\^) Positive lookahead, assert 1,24 of the allowed chars followed by ^ to the right to make a total of 2-26 characters
[A-Z .()-]*\/[A-Z .()-]* Match / between optional allowed chars
\^ Match ^

See a regex demo.

If the / can not be at the start or at the end (matching at least 5 characters in that case)

\^(?=[A-Z .()\/-]{1,24}\^)[A-Z .()-]+\/[A-Z .()-]+\^

See another regex demo

Regex Track1 Magnetic Stripe

1 Answers1