Regular expression to find email address pattern of <string><number><string>

Question

We have an application that we suspect is getting spam/clickfarm email addresses signing up. A lot of them follow the pattern:

firstName:number:[email protected]

For example,

RegEx

/(\w+)(\d+)(\w+)/g gets me close to what I want but also captures numbers at the end of the string

Like /(\w+?)(\d+)(\w+)/g? What numbers are there at the end of the string? — Wiktor Stribiżew
– Wiktor Stribiżew, Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 17:51
That's closer, but still captures ones like [email protected] — elzi
– elzi, Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 17:52

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-17 17:55:06Z

1

The \w shorthand character class also matches digits and letters. You may either replace it with [a-zA-Z] or subtract the digits using a reverse char class - [^\W\d].

Use either

([a-zA-Z]+)(\d+)([a-zA-Z]+)

(see demo) or an anchored version:

^([^\W\d]+)(\d+)([^\W\d]+)
^

See another demo. The ^ will anchor the pattern at the start of the string.

answered Oct 17, 2016 at 17:55

Wiktor Stribiżew

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