One quibble is that because \d is a subset of \w then a string such as "abc123def" will get \w{9} in your version.

Yup. But personally I consider that a feature not a bug. :-) After all ldkjdlkjf2098kklls probably isnt [[:alpha:]]+\d+[[:alpha:]]+

But we are both in agreement that there isnt a good way to do this, although as we both have shown there are a variety of bad ways to do it... BTW, is the . really necessary? I dont think it is as the s/// will just skip the char if it doesnt match.

Oh and I considered using something like you post here, but I fgured that considering I tend not to use the POSIX char classes that much probably others wouldnt either.

:-)

Yves / DeMerphq
---
Software Engineering is Programming when you can't. -- E. W. Dijkstra (RIP)

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Regular Expression Builder by demerphq
in thread Regular Expression Builder by Rich36

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