Getting illegal character range in regex :java

Question

I have a simple regex pattern that verifies names. But When I run it I get illegal character range error. I thought by escaping "\s" it will allow a space but the compiler is still complaining.

public boolean verifyName(String name) {
    String namePattern = "^[\\p{L}]++(?:[',-\\s][\\p{L}]++)*+\\.?$";
    return name.matches(namePattern);
}

and this is the error that i think shouldn't be occurring since a name might contain anny of these [',-\\s]

so where am i not understanding?

why are you using ++ instead of +

Anirudha
– Anirudha

2013-04-20 07:32:44 +00:00
Commented Apr 20, 2013 at 7:32 — Anirudha
– Anirudha, Commented Apr 20, 2013 at 7:32

Pavel Anossov · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-20 07:24:32Z

12

You can't have a range "from , to whitespace". Perhaps you meant to escape -?

\s is not a space, it's [ \t\r\n\v\f] (space, tab, carriage return, newline, vertical tab or a form feed).

Things that will work:

"[ ',-]"

"[',\\- ]"

edited Apr 20, 2013 at 7:24

answered Apr 20, 2013 at 7:15

Pavel Anossov

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2 Comments

Obby Over a year ago

so how should the range be...I want only to allow an apostrophe, hyphen, comma or space

Pavel Anossov Over a year ago

If you want a space, use a space. If you put the hyphen last, you don't need to escape it: [ ',-]

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