Regex not working

[_G_1]

Can anyone tell me why my regex is not working on my cfinput textbox please. I only want to allow a-z as available charactors to enter and the below code fails.

<cfinput type="text"
        id="surname"
        name="surname"
        class="txt"
        title="Surname"
        value="#presentsurname#"
        validate="regex"
        pattern="[a-z]"
        message="Please enter a valid Surname."
        maxlength="60" />

If i type in $$$ then the regex is flagged up and I get the error message displayed.

Although if I type in a$$, I get no error message.

Thanks,

G

[Scott Stroz]

The regex you are using is only checking the first character in the string - and only checking to make sure its lowercase.

Try using *

[Owainnorth]

That would only allow one character, try [a-z]+ to allow one or more.

[_G_1]

Thanks for the quick replies guys, your really helpful and both regex examples you have given both work.

To cut a long story short I was give the following regex to use against my surname textbox, and I need to follow 'their' standards so I must use this pattern.

([A-Z'\-]*)|([A-Z'\-][A-Z '\-]*[A-Z'\-])

And this should only allow A-Z (in capitals) and any of the other special charactors that are mentioned in the regex....  Although this pattern is allowing me to enter A$$ and I do not understand why it is allowing the $ sign to be an enterable charactor when the dollar sign is not listed in the regex.

[Owainnorth · Accepted solution]

Try putting the start and end chars in, ie ^ at the start and $ at the end to make sure it's matching the entire string.

[ColdFusionUsers2]

Looks like you found a fix,

There is a tool I use called RegexBuddy that helps me debug Regular Expressions in real time. Also has a gui to help you build a Regular expressions, thats how I started but now I can write them with no problems.

http://www.regexbuddy.com/