I know how to check if a string is only numbers, but how can I detect IF the string contains anything besides
[a-zA-Z0-9]
So in other words if the string is:$string = "hello world"; then the check would be ok, but if it had:$string = "hello world!"; Then it would not because it had a ! in it. But I don't want to check just for ! or other characters, I want to make sure it ONLY has a-z, A-Z and 0 to 9 and that is it.

sort of like this:
my $string = "I am not a window washer."; if($string =~ ?what pattern would I search for?) { # Oops has invalid character } else { # String is perfect only alphanumeric }
That is what I cannot find. I have searched everywhere, for everything I can think of, like 'alphanumeric only' 'alphanumeric' 'regex alphanumeric' but I keep coming up empty handed.

Can you please point me in the right direction?

Thank you!!

In reply to check if string contains anything other than alphanumeric by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.