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c#regexcharnumbersalphanumeric

Regular expression for accepting alphanumeric characters (6-10 chars) .NET, C#


I am building a user registration form using C# with .NET. I have a requirement to validate user entered password fields. Validation requirement is as below.

  1. It should be alphanumeric (a-z , A-Z , 0-9)
  2. It should accept 6-10 characters (minimum 6 characters, maximum 10 characters)
  3. With at least 1 alphabet and number (example: stack1over)

I am using a regular expression as below.

^([a-zA-Z0-9]{6,10})$

It satisfies my first 2 conditions. It fails when I enter only characters or numbers.


Solution

  • Pass it through multiple regexes if you can. It'll be a lot cleaner than those look-ahead monstrosities :-)

    ^[a-zA-Z0-9]{6,10}$
    [a-zA-Z]
    [0-9]
    

    Though some might consider it clever, it's not necessary to do everything with a single regex (or even with any regex, sometimes - just witness the people who want a regex to detect numbers between 75 and 4093).

    Would you rather see some nice clean code like:

    if not checkRegex(str,"^[0-9]+$")
        return false
    val = string_to_int(str);
    return (val >= 75) and (val <= 4093)
    

    or something like:

    return checkRegex(str,"^7[5-9]$|^[89][0-9]$|^[1-9][0-9][0-9]$|^[1-3][0-9][0-9][0-9]$|^40[0-8][0-9]$|^409[0-3]$")
    

    I know which one I'd prefer to maintain :-)