I have a requirement where I need a regex which
example :-
A,B --- correct
A,B,C,D,E,F --- correct
D,D,A --- wrong
,B,C --- wrong
B,C, --- wrong
A,,B,C --- wrong
Can anyone help ?
Another idea with capturing and checking by use of a lookahead:
^(?:([A-Z])(?!.*?\1),?\b)+$
You can test here at regex101 if it meets your requirements.
If you don't want to match single characters, e.g. A, change the + quantifier to {2,}.
The statement of the question is incomplete in several respects. I have made the following assumptions:
D,D,A is incorrect I assume that a letter cannot be followed by a comma followed by the same letter.A,,B,C is incorrect I assume a comma cannot follow a comma.i) to permit either case).We observe that the requirements are satisfied if and only if the string begins with a capital letter and is followed by a sequence of comma-capital letter pairs, provided that no capital letter is followed by a comma followed by the same letter. We therefore can attempt to match the following regular expression.
^(?:([A-Z]),(?!\1))*[A-Z]$
The elements of the expression are as follows.
^ # match beginning of string
(?: # begin a non-capture group
([A-Z]) # match a capital letter and save to capture group 1
, # match a comma
(?!\1) # use negative lookahead to assert next character is not equal
# to the content of capture group 1
)* # end non-capture group and execute it zero or more times
[A-Z] # match a capital letter
$ # match end of string
Here is a big ugly regex solution:
var inputs = ['A,B', 'D,D,D', ',B,C', 'B,C,', 'A,,B'];
for (var i=0; i < inputs.length; ++i) {
if (/^(?!.*?([^,]+).*,\1(?:,|$))[^,]+(?:,[^,]+)*$/.test(inputs[i])) {
console.log(inputs[i] + " => VALID");
}
else {
console.log(inputs[i] + " => INVALID");
}
}
The regex has two parts to it. It uses a negative lookahead to assert that no two CSV entries ever repeat in the input. Then, it uses a straightforward pattern to match any proper CSV delimited input. Here is an explanation:
^ from the start of the input
(?!.*?([^,]+).*,\1(?:,|$)) assert that no CSV element ever repeats
[^,]+ then match a CSV element
(?:,[^,]+)* followed by comma and another element, 0 or more times
$ end of the input