regex - search for pattern that starts with alphabetics and ends with alphabets or space

Question

What is the correct regex for getting a string that contains only letters, must start with letters and a continuous string of letters. But can end with letters OR a space (just space and not tabs or returns).

I have this pattern /^\S*[a-zA-Z]\s*$/

Is it correct? do I need the \S* at the start and how do I ensure that there is no spaces in between letters?

TIA

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 16 '12 at 18:31

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if it must start with letters, contain only letters (no spaces), and could end with a single space i think it should be

^[a-zA-Z]+ ?$

answered Mar 16 '12 at 18:31

jambriz

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Thanks jambriz, this works too. My problem now is to investigate which solution is most optimal for getting about 90K matches out of a 200K array. – Jamex Mar 16 '12 at 19:06

RNA · Answer 2 · 2013-04-23T17:45:23.973

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/^[a-zA-Z]+[a-zA-Z ]$/

No need for \S*

And you can test it online. There are websites such as http://www.solmetra.com/scripts/regex/ to check regex.

edited Apr 23 '13 at 17:45

answered Mar 16 '12 at 18:22

RNA

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That site looks pretty good. Try http://gskinner.com/RegExr/. It's my regex weapon of choice :). I really like the real-time updating and the replace option. – kentcdodds Mar 16 '12 at 18:27
Thanks RNAer, that testing website looks good. It actually is intuitive and I can test my string a see the outputs. Also, I modified your regex to take out the 'space' that comes after the + sign. That mod works for my intent. /^[a-zA-Z]+[a-zA-Z ]$/ – Jamex Mar 16 '12 at 18:58
@Jamex:Yes. That space is a typo. It should be removed. Sorry – RNA Mar 17 '12 at 03:16

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 16 '12 at 18:26

2

^[a-zA-Z]+?[a-zA-Z ]$

This assumes a modern regular expression processor which allows for non-greedy (+?) repeats.

answered Mar 16 '12 at 18:26

Lance Helsten

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Thanks Lance, this works for my purpose. But for my purpose, it can also work without the '?' mark. ^[a-zA-Z]+[a-zA-Z ]$ – Jamex Mar 16 '12 at 19:02

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 16 '12 at 19:14

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To be unicode compatible:

^\pL ?$

answered Mar 16 '12 at 19:14

Toto

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Thanks M42 for your time, I am sure this is really useful if I know which context to apply it to. – Jamex Mar 17 '12 at 02:48

regex - search for pattern that starts with alphabetics and ends with alphabets or space

4 Answers4