I am trying to create a regex to have a string only contain 0-9 as the characters and it must be at least 1 char in length and no more than 45. so example would be 00303039 would be a match, and 039330a29 would not.
So far this is what I have but I am not sure that it is correct
[0-9]{1,45}
I have also tried
^[0-9]{45}*$
but that does not seem to work either. I am not very familiar with regex so any help would be great. Thanks!
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^[0-9]{1,45}$ is correct.
You are almost there, all you need is start anchor (^) and end anchor ($):
^[0-9]{1,45}$
\d is short for the character class [0-9]. You can use that as:
^\d{1,45}$
The anchors force the pattern to match entire input, not just a part of it.
Your regex [0-9]{1,45} looks for 1 to 45 digits, so string like foo1 also get matched as it contains 1.
^[0-9]{1,45} looks for 1 to 45 digits but these digits must be at the beginning of the input. It matches 123 but also 123foo
[0-9]{1,45}$ looks for 1 to 45 digits but these digits must be at the end of the input. It matches 123 but also foo123
^[0-9]{1,45}$ looks for 1 to 45 digits but these digits must be both at the start and at the end of the input, effectively it should be entire input.
A combination of both attempts is probably what you need:
^[0-9]{1,45}$
For this case word boundary (\b) can also be used instead of start anchor (^) and end anchor ($):
\b\d{1,45}\b
\b is a position between \w and \W (non-word char), or at the beginning or end of a string.
Rails doesnt like the using of ^ and $ for some security reasons , probably its better to use \A and \z to set the beginning and the end of the string
Use this regular expression if you don't want to start with zero:
^[1-9]([0-9]{1,45}$)
If you don't mind starting with zero, use:
^[0-9]{1,45}$
The first matches any number of digits within your string (allows other characters too, i.e.: "039330a29"). The second allows only 45 digits (and not less). So just take the better from both:
^\d{1,45}$
where \d is the same like [0-9].
codaddict has provided the right answer. As for what you've tried, I'll explain why they don't make the cut:
[0-9]{1,45} is almost there, however it matches a 1-to-45-digit string even if it occurs within another longer string containing other characters. Hence you need ^ and $ to restrict it to an exact match.
^[0-9]{45}*$ matches an exactly-45-digit string, repeated 0 or any number of times (*). That means the length of the string can only be 0 or a multiple of 45 (90, 135, 180...).
Source: Stackoverflow.com