RegExp: Alphanumeric and Hypen Only?

How can I use regular expressions to make sure a string only has letters, numbers, and/or hypens?

0123 - Okay
0a12 - Okay
0-12 - Okay

Any other characters are not allowed. I've searched for this, but all I've found is confusion. Any help would be appreciated.

([0-9]*[a-z]*(-)*)+

Theoretically, above regular expression shoud work, right?

I tried this string: "a@sdf g-hj123leuf h gu" and it validated with that code. :(

By the way, here is my exact code that I tried. Maybe I goofed something up:

VB Code:

Private Function ValidateVIN(ByVal strVinNumber) As String
        Dim strNewVIN As String
        Dim rEx As Regex
 
        'First thing we do is remove the spaces, since those don't count
        'Towards our length requirements (ii):
        strNewVIN = Replace(strVinNumber, " ", "")
 
        If Not rEx.IsMatch(strNewVIN, "([0-9]*[a-z]*(-)*)+") Then
            Return "VIN Number " & strNewVIN & " contains invalid characters."
        Else
            Return "EVERYTHING IS GOOD!"
        End If
 
    End Function

It might be easier to test for the allowed characters in one of the key events - keydown, keypress, etc.

Hope this solves your problem.

Shashi

Private Function ValidateVIN(ByVal strVinNumber As String) As String
Dim strNewVIN As String
Dim rEx As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("[^A-Za-z0-9-]+")

'First thing we do is remove the spaces, since those don't count
'Towards our length requirements (ii):
strNewVIN = Replace(strVinNumber, " ", "")

If rEx.Match(strNewVIN).Success Then
Return "VIN Number " & strNewVIN & " contains invalid characters."
Else
Return "EVERYTHING IS GOOD!"
End If

Here's a good online tester with library...
http://regexlib.com/RETester.aspx

Anyway I think this should do it...

It does the complete opposite... MATCHES WHEN INVALID characters exist.

Notice there is a space between 9 and _ in there.. I wasn't sure if you were allowing spaces or not, so if you're not, remove the space.

Code:

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([^a-zA-Z0-9 -])

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Quote:

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Originally posted by salvelinus
It might be easier to test for the allowed characters in one of the key events - keydown, keypress, etc.

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There are no key events. The data is read from a file created by another program.

To everyone else: I'll give those a try, thanks.