Hi all, sorry for the rubbish post title but i've no clue what else to call this!

Pretty new to

regular expression

 s (and do everything in my power to avoid them normally), and can't seem to figureout how to get it to do what I want, any help would be appreciated.

I'm looking to validate a string by checking it matches the following pattern and rules;

- String must start with either D, M or Y (singular)
- Above must be followed by at least one number
- First condition must only be followed by numbers

I've got this so far, but because im matching a 'pattern' it will validate things like M333D333 - I havent managed to get the bit to say "followed by any number of digits, and only digits to the end of the string.



Should probably say I'm using whatever the default

PHP

 

regular expression

  engine is. Any tips would be great - this obscure language is driving me insane!

Cheers,

DM

preg_match('/^(d|m|y)[0-9]*?$/'
or
preg_match('/^(d|m|y)[0-9]*?w/'

*? match the previous as many times as needed without overlapping the next thingy. non-greedy repeater match.
$ is the end of string
w is word boundry, which could be any whitespace type of character plus symbols.

untested but should work.

I think that's really tight NBs, but I'm wondering about a couplalittle things:

Perhaps should the pattern should look more like this:

$matches = preg_match('/^(d/m/y)[0-9]+$/i');

which would make sure that there is *at least one* digit after the d/m/y and also case-insensitives the match. Also makes sure that the string ends after the digits.

ya true. + makes more sense.

Cheers both, just disected those and they're exactly what I was hoping for - and even better I now know a little more about

regular expression

 s!

Ta

DM