Regular expression to allow spaces between words

Question

I want a regular expression that prevents symbols and only allows letters and numbers  The regex below works great  but it doesn t allow for spaces between words     a-zA-Z0-9       For example  when using this regular expression  HelloWorld  is fine  but  Hello World  does not match   How can I tweak it to allow spaces

User · Accepted Answer

tl dr  Just add a space in your character class     a-zA-Z0-9         nbsp     Now  if you want to be strict     The above isn t exactly correct  Due to the fact that   means zero or more  it would match all of the following cases that one would not usually mean to match    An empty string      A string comprised entirely of spaces    nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp    A string that leads and   or trails with spaces    nbsp  nbsp  nbsp Hello World nbsp  nbsp    A string that contains multiple spaces in between words   Hello nbsp  nbsp  nbsp World     Originally I didn t think such details were worth going into  as OP was asking such a basic question that it seemed strictness wasn t a concern  Now that the question s gained some popularity however  I want to say        use  stema s answer   Which  in my flavor  without using  w  translates to     a-zA-Z0-9      a-zA-Z0-9          Please upvote  stema regardless    Some things to note about this  and  stema s  answer    If you want to allow multiple spaces between words  say  if you d like to allow accidental double-spaces  or if you re working with copy-pasted text from a PDF   then add a   after the space     w     w      If you want to allow tabs and newlines  whitespace characters   then replace the space with a  s      w   s  w       Here I suggest the   by default because  for example  Windows linebreaks consist of two whitespace characters in sequence   r n  so you ll need the   to catch both    Still not working   Check what dialect of regular expressions you re using   In languages like Java you ll have to escape your backslashes  i e    w and   s  In older or more basic languages and utilities  like sed   w and  s aren t defined  so write them out with character classes  e g   a-zA-Z0-9   and   f n p r t   respectively    nbsp       I know this question is tagged vb net  but based on 25 000  views  I m guessing it s not only those folks who are coming across this question  Currently it s the first hit on google for the search phrase  regular expression space word

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This one worked for me      w

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It was my regex    quot       3 15          p L   p N           -      quot  I just added    w     at the end of my regex before     quot       3 15          p L   p N           -      w       quot  Now string is allowed to have spaces

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Had a good look at many of these supposed answers        and bupkis after scouring Stack Overflow as well as other sites for a regex that matches any string with no starting or trailing white-space and only a single space between strictly alpha character words       a-zA-Z      lt   d s   a-zA-Z   s   a-zA-Z      Thus easily modified to alphanumeric     a-zA-Z0-9      lt   d s   a-zA-Z0-9   s   a-zA-Z0-9       This does not match single words but just use a switch if-else with a simple   a-zA-Z0-9    if you need to catch single words in addition    enjoy  D

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Try with      w         Explanation    w             - alias for  a-zA-Z 0-9   whitespace    - allow whitespace after word  set is as optional

User · Answer

This does not allow space in the beginning  But allowes spaces in between words  Also allows for special characters between words  A good regex for FirstName and LastName fields    w

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Just add a space to end of your regex pattern as follows    a-zA-Z0-9

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I find this one works well for a  FullName      a-z   -     a-z   -      1 70

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For alphabets only      a-zA-Z     s   a-zA-Z      For alphanumeric value and        w    s   w

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This regular expression    w   s w       will only allow a single space between words and no leading or trailing spaces   Below is the explanation of the regular expression      Assert position at start of the string    w  Match any word character  a-zA-Z0-9    Quantifier    Between one and unlimited times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy   1st Capturing group   s w     Quantifier    Between zero and unlimited times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy   s Match any white space character   r n t f    w  Match any word character  a-zA-Z0-9   Quantifier    Between one and unlimited times  as many times as possible  giving back as needed  greedy    Assert position at end of the string

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try        to allow white spaces it worked for me

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I assume you don t want leading trailing space  This means you have to split the regex into  first character    stuff in the middle  and  last character      a-zA-Z0-9   a-zA-Z0-9     a-zA-Z0-9      or if you use a perl-like syntax     w  w    w    Also  If you intentionally worded your regex that it also allows empty Strings  you have to make the entire thing optional      w  w    w      If you want to only allow single space chars  it looks a bit different       w     w       This matches 0  n words followed by a single space  plus one word without space  And makes the entire thing optional to allow empty strings

User · Answer

Try this   Python version     A-Za-z0-9   2  25     change the upper limit based on your data set

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Try with this one  result   re search r quot  w     w  quot   text

User · Answer

One possibility would be to just add the space into you character class  like acheong87 suggested  this depends on how strict you are on your pattern  because this would also allow a string starting with 5 spaces  or strings consisting only of spaces   The other possibility is to define a pattern   I will use  w this is in most regex flavours the same than  a-zA-Z0-9    in some it is Unicode based     w    w       This will allow a series of at least one word and the words are divided by spaces     Match the start of the string   w  Match a series of at least one word character     w    is a group that is repeated 0 or more times  In the group it expects a space followed by a series of at least one word character    matches the end of the string

[regex] Regular expression to allow spaces between words

tl;dr

Now, if you want to be strict...

...use @stema's answer.

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