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I am looking for a regex that validates the following string c3a0acfb-cdce-4a5c-a089-43c09578fc0f, it always will have lower case letter, number and -, I know that [0-9a-z] validates the letters and numbers, but I need to say that caracter - can appear anywhere.

Can anyone help me, please?

Thanks.

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  • 4
    Have you tried anything yet? Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 13:27
  • ^[0-9a-z]{8}-([0-9a-z]{4}-){3}[0-9a-z]{12}$ Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 13:33
  • Can check the regex easily too if ind this place helpful regexplanet.com/advanced/java/index.html Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 13:34
  • 3
    Is it a hexadecimal code? If so you should validate only for [0-9a-f] not [0-9a-z] Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 13:35
  • To those trying to give a regex placing the -s at specific locations in the string, note that the OP says: "caracter [sic] - can appear anywhere". The comments on Bathsheba's answer confirm this further. Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 13:38

5 Answers 5

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3

regex :

([a-z0-9\-]+)

The above will allow alphabets digits and hyphen.

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2 Comments

You don't need to escape the -: stackoverflow.com/questions/7604879/…
Clarification (so that it's not dependent on the link): You don't need to escape the - if it's the first or last character listed in the character set.
2

Assuming this is a GUID, use this:

"{0,1}([0-9a-fA-F]){8}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){4}-([0-9a-fA-F]){12}"
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4 Comments

I guess I was not very clear in what I wrote, I am sorry. I wanted to say my string can have lower cases letters, numbers and -, not necessary in that order neither quantity that I wrote in my question, do you understand?
I do but was thinking that what you really wanted was a reg-ex for a globally unique identifier.
Your answer helps me too, because I saw that I can check the length of string between hyphens. Thanks.
@Danilo M, you can also use {a,b} to mean must have between a and b (inclusive) occurrences of the previous.
1 
([0-9a-z]*)\-([0-9a-z]*)\-([0-9a-z]*)

This regexp should do it, in java you might need to add an extra backslash before -

Assuming that it is a certain number of -

In the future you can experiment at: http://gskinner.com/RegExr/

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0

This is so simple!! Have you really tried anything?? If you want to match a string containing lowercase letters, digits and hyphen, you can use:

[a-z0-9-]

If you strictly want to match the above pattern, then:

 (([a-z0-9]+)(-)?)+

should work. It means any alphanumeric folled by one or zero hyphen.

I am not sure if for hyphen we need to use /- instead of - directly :D. So atleast do this by yourself and let me also know :D.

[a-z0-9-]+ will also work for you, but it will also accept strings of type:

 adcacf--sadcac-das-----

and even this will also be accepted: 

------------- (strings of hyphen)

So, if you know that you won't get these type of strings, then you may go with [a-z0-9-]+ as told by PVR.

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Try [0-9a-z\\-]. (Warning: This doesn't validate the length of the string.)

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