Java regex word bounderies

Question

I want to create regex, that will match second names with whitespaces and dashes, like:

Smith-Wright
Smith
Smith Wright

But if you will enter just - or whitespace, it shouldn't work. For now I have a regex like ^[a-zA-Z\s\-]+$, but it watches words with only - and whitespaces. How to create regex that will match words with only my separators?

Pushpesh Kumar Rajwanshi · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-23 10:00:00Z

3

You can use this regex for the kind of names you want to match,

^[a-zA-Z]+(?:[ -][a-zA-Z]+)*$

Explanation:

^ - Start of string
[a-zA-Z]+ - Match a name consisting of alphabets one or more characters
(?:[ -][a-zA-Z]+)* - Additionally match more name part provided it is space or hyphen separated.
$ - End of string

Regex Demo

edited Apr 23, 2019 at 10:00

answered Apr 23, 2019 at 9:55

Pushpesh Kumar Rajwanshi

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2 Comments

Hitrene Over a year ago

But it's not matches just "Smith". What I should add to match this?

Pushpesh Kumar Rajwanshi Over a year ago

If you just want to match Smith just change last + to * Demo which will make the later part zero or more and hence optional

laenkeio · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-23 09:59:33Z

1

If I understand your post correctly, you want to match:

"Smith-Wright"
"Smith"
"Smith Wright"

but not

"-"
" "
"-Wright"
" Wright"

If that's correct, you can use:

^[a-zA-Z]+([ -][a-zA-Z]+)*$

You can put your separators in place of [ -].

answered Apr 23, 2019 at 9:59

laenkeio

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