simple regex need help

[lli2k5]

Hi,

I'm trying to create a regex that matches words that must contain letters and numbers, but and/or dashes. I know that it should be simple, but I am having trouble forming the inclusions/exclusions.

match

ABC123
ABC-123

not match
ABC
123

[bradgrafelman]

Well, I'm not a regexp expert, so this isn't exactly optimised (it's actually rather sloppy) but this is what I came up with:

$pattern = '/(([a-z]+-?[0-9]+)|([0-9]+-?[a-z]+))/i';

[NogDog]

This is what I came up with (not beautifully concise, but it works):

$data = array('ABC123', 'ABC-123', 'ABC', '123', 'xyz');
foreach($data as $test)
{
   echo "<p>'$test' is ";
   if(preg_match('/[^A-Z0-9-]/', $test) or
      !preg_match('/([A-Z][A-Z-]*[0-9])|([0-9][0-9-]*[A-Z])/', $test))
   {
      echo "NOT ";
   }
   echo "valid.</p>\n";
}

(Add an i after the last "/" of each regex if you want to allow lower case letters, too.)

[lli2k5]

thanks guys

[Weedpacket]

if(preg_match('/[^-a-z0-9]/i',$word) || !preg_match('/[a-z]/i', $word) || !preg_match('/[0-9]/', $word))
{
    // Doesn't satisfy requirements
}
else
{
    // Satisfies requirements
}

[lli2k5]

weedpacket has a sweet one