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length in regular expression [duplicate]

I need a regex that will only find matches where the entire string matches my query.
For instance if I do a search for movies with the name "Red October" I only want to match on that exact title (case insensitive) but not match titles like "The Hunt For Red October". Not quite sure I know how to do this. Anyone know?
Thanks!

Try the following regular expression:
^Red October$
By default, regular expressions are case sensitive. The ^ marks the start of the matching text and $ the end.

Generally, and with default settings, ^ and $ anchors are a good way of ensuring that a regex matches an entire string.
A few caveats, though:
If you have alternation in your regex, be sure to enclose your regex in a non-capturing group before surrounding it with ^ and $:
^foo|bar$
is of course different from
^(?:foo|bar)$
Also, ^ and $ can take on a different meaning (start/end of line instead of start/end of string) if certain options are set. In text editors that support regular expressions, this is usually the default behaviour. In some languages, especially Ruby, this behaviour cannot even be switched off.
Therefore there is another set of anchors that are guaranteed to only match at the start/end of the entire string:
\A matches at the start of the string.
\Z matches at the end of the string or before a final line break.
\z matches at the very end of the string.
But not all languages support these anchors, most notably JavaScript.

I know that this may be a little late to answer this, but maybe it will come handy for someone else.
Simplest way:
var someString = "...";
var someRegex = "...";
var match = Regex.Match(someString , someRegex );
if(match.Success && match.Value.Length == someString.Length){
//pass
} else {
//fail
}

Use the ^ and $ modifiers to denote where the regex pattern sits relative to the start and end of the string:
Regex.Match("Red October", "^Red October$"); // pass
Regex.Match("The Hunt for Red October", "^Red October$"); // fail

You need to enclose your regex in ^ (start of string) and $ (end of string):
^Red October$

If the string may contain regex metasymbols (. { } ( ) $ etc), I propose to use
^\QYourString\E$
\Q starts quoting all the characters until \E.
Otherwise the regex can be unappropriate or even invalid.
If the language uses regex as string parameter (as I see in the example), double slash should be used:
^\\QYourString\\E$
Hope this tip helps somebody.

Sorry, but that's a little unclear.
From what i read, you want to do simple string compare. You don't need regex for that.
string myTest = "Red October";
bool isMatch = (myTest.ToLower() == "Red October".ToLower());
Console.WriteLine(isMatch);
isMatch = (myTest.ToLower() == "The Hunt for Red October".ToLower());

You can do it like this Exemple if i only want to catch one time the letter minus a in a string and it can be check with myRegex.IsMatch()
^[^e][e]{1}[^e]$

What is wrong with my regex (simple)?

I am trying to make a regex that matches all occurrences of words that are at the start of a line and begin with #.
For example in:
#region #like
#hey
It would match #region and #hey.
This is what I have right now:
^#\w*
I apologize for posting this question. I'm sure it has a very simple answer, but I have been unable to find it. I admit that I am a regex noob.

What you've got should work, depending on what flags you pass for RegexOptions. You need to make sure you pass RegexOptions.Multiline:
var matches = Regex.Matches(input, #"^#\w*", RegexOptions.Multiline);
See the documentation I linked to above:
Multiline Multiline mode. Changes the meaning of ^ and $ so they match at the beginning and end, respectively, of any line, and not just the beginning and end of the entire string.

The regex looks fine, make sure you're using a verbatim string literal (# prefix) to define your regex, i.e. #"^#\w*" otherwise the backslash will be treated as an escape sequence.

Use this regex
^#.+?\b
.+ will ensure at least one character after # and \b indicates word boundry. ? adds non-greediness to the + operator so as to avoid matching whole string #region #like

How to check if a string starts and ends with specific strings?

I have a string like:
string str = "https://abce/MyTest";
I want to check if the particular string starts with https:// and ends with /MyTest.
How can I acheive that?

This regular expression:
^https://.*/MyTest$
will do what you ask.
^ matches the beginning of the string.
https:// will match exactly that.
.* will match any number of characters (the * part) of any kind (the . part). If you want to make sure there is at least one character in the middle, use .+ instead.
/MyTest matches exactly that.
$ matches the end of the string.
To verify the match, use:
Regex.IsMatch(str, #"^https://.*/MyTest$");
More info at the MSDN Regex page.

Try the following:
var str = "https://abce/MyTest";
var match = Regex.IsMatch(str, "^https://.+/MyTest$");
The ^ identifier matches the start of the string, while the $ identifier matches the end of the string. The .+ bit simply means any sequence of chars (except a null sequence).
You need to import the System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace for this, of course.

I want to check if the particular string starts with "https://" and ends with "/MyTest".
Well, you could use regex for that. But it's clearer (and probably quicker) to just say what you mean:
str.StartsWith("https://") && str.EndsWith("/MyTest")
You then don't have to worry about whether any of the characters in your match strings need escaping in regex. (For this example, they don't.)

In .NET:
^https://.*/MyTest$

Try Expresso, good for building .NET regexes and teaching you the syntax at the same time.

HAndy tool for genrating regular expressions
http://txt2re.com/

C# Check a word exists in a string

Is the best way to do this with Regex? I don't want it picking up partial words for example if I'm search for Gav it shouldn't match Gavin.
Any examples would be great as my regular expression skills are non existant.
Thanks

Yes, a Regex is perfect for the job.
Something like:
string regexPattern = string.Format(#"\b{0}\b", Regex.Escape(yourWord));
if (Regex.IsMatch(yourString, regexPattern)) {
// word found
}

What you want is probably like this:
if (Regex.IsMatch(myString, #"\bGav\b")) { ... }
The \b:s in the regex indicate word boundaries, i.e. a whitespace or start/end of the string. You may also want to throw in RegexOptions.IgnoreCase as the third parameter if you want that. Note that the #-sign in front of the regex is essential, otherwise it gets misinterpreted due to the double meaning of the \ sign.

Matching an (easy??) regular expression using C#'s regex

Ok sorry this might seem like a dumb question but I cannot figure this thing out :
I am trying to parse a string and simply want to check whether it only contains the following characters : '0123456789dD+ '
I have tried many things but just can't get to figure out the right regex to use!
Regex oReg = new Regex(#"[\d dD+]+");
oReg.IsMatch("e4");
will return true even though e is not allowed...
I've tried many strings, including Regex("[1234567890 dD+]+")...
It always works on Regex Pal but not in C#...
Please advise and again i apologize this seems like a very silly question

Try this:
#"^[0-9dD+ ]+$"
The ^ and $ at the beginning and end signify the beginning and end of the input string respectively. Thus between the beginning and then end only the stated characters are allowed. In your example, the regex matches if the string contains one of the characters even if it contains other characters as well.
#comments: Thanks, I fixed the missing + and space.

Oops, you forgot the boundaries, try:
Regex oReg = new Regex(#"^[0-9dD +]+$");
oReg.IsMatch("e4");
^ matches the begining of the text stream, $ matches the end.

It is matching the 4; you need ^ and $ to terminate the regex if you want a full match for the entire string - i.e.
Regex re = new Regex(#"^[\d dD+]+$");
Console.WriteLine(re.IsMatch("e4"));
Console.WriteLine(re.IsMatch("4"));

This is because regular expressions can also match parts of the input, in this case it just matches the "4" of "e4". If you want to match a whole line, you have to surround the regex with "^" (matches line start) and "$" (matches line end).
So to make your example work, you have to write is as follows:
Regex oReg = new Regex(#"^[\d dD+]+$");
oReg.IsMatch("e4");

I believe it's returning True because it's finding the 4. Nothing in the regex excludes the letter e from the results.

Another option is to invert everything, so it matches on characters you don't want to allow:
Regex oReg = new Regex(#"[^0-9dD+]");
!oReg.IsMatch("e4");