Regular expression to allow certain characters

[Jaymond Flurrie]

Using Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5.

I'm pretty close with this one, but shortly, I want to allow numbers, letters (including ÅÄÖ) and underscores. I don't want to allow special characters, like ^ or $. So the not allowed characters should simply be removed. I have a problem with that $ now, I understood that's the "end of string to test", so I think I'm supposed to include it somehow there.

This is what I have:

Sub testparsename()
    Dim result As String
    result = ParseName("^Test$") 'This returns now Test$
End Sub

Public Function ParseName(original As String) As String

    Dim searchpattern As String:
    searchpattern = "[^0-9A-ZÅÄÖ_$]"
  
    Dim replacewith As String
    replacewith = vbNullString
  
    Dim result As String
    Dim regEx As New RegExp
  
    With regEx
        .Global = True
        .MultiLine = True
        .IgnoreCase = True
        .Pattern = searchpattern
  
        result = .Replace(original, replacewith)
    End With
  
    ParseName = result
End Function

 

[JvdV]

Do you simply mean you are looking to test against "^[\wÅÄÖ]+$". Since you ignore case sensitivity this would mean:

• ^ - Match start-line anchor;
• [\wÅÄÖ]+ - Match 1+ characters in the character class where "\w" is short for "A-Za-z0-9_", or what is called a word-character;
• $ - End-line anchor;

 

[Jaymond Flurrie]

Do you simply mean you are looking to test against "^[\wÅÄÖ]+$". Since you ignore case sensitivity this would mean:

• ^ - Match start-line anchor;
• [\wÅÄÖ]+ - Match 1+ characters in the character class where "\w" is short for "A-Za-z0-9_", or what is called a word-character;
• $ - End-line anchor;

That \w sounds like a really good option. But this below returns now also the caret

Sub testparsename()
    Dim result As String
    result = ParseName("^Test$") 'This returns now ^Test$
End Sub

Public Function ParseName(original As String) As String

    Dim searchpattern As String:
    searchpattern = "^[\wÅÄÖ]+$"
  
    Dim replacewith As String
    replacewith = vbNullString
  
    Dim result As String
    Dim regEx As New RegExp
  
    With regEx
        .Global = True
        .MultiLine = True
        .IgnoreCase = True
        .Pattern = searchpattern
  
        result = .Replace(original, replacewith)
    End With
  
    ParseName = result
End Function

 

[Akuini]

I have a problem with that $ now, I understood that's the "end of string to test", so I think I'm supposed to include it somehow there.

I don't think so, just remove $.

  searchpattern = "[^0-9A-ZÅÄÖ_]"

 

[Rick Rothstein]

I know you are trying to do this using Regular Expressions, but it can also be done reasonably easily without using them...

Function ParseName(ByVal Original As String) As String
  Dim X As Long
  For X = 1 To Len(Original)
    If Mid(Original, X, 1) Like "[!A-Za-z0-9ÅÄÖ_]" Then
      Mid(Original, X) = "`"
    End If
  Next
  ParseName = Replace(Original, "`", "")
End Function