need a good regex for "OR" structure

[senca99]

Hey everyone!

I can do some basic regexing but I don't really have a clue for this one. I want to create a regex that checks a user inputfield and it can only be this:

4

34

535

4a

55C

997G

 

Only these 6 matches, an int, 2 ints, 3 ints, 1 int and a char, 2 ints and a char or 3 ints and a char. Not minding caps but it cannot be more then these 6.

Something like "anintORtwointsORthreeintsORoneintandacharOR..." you get the point . The OR's are bugging me because I can't find a single line regex for it.

Can anyone help me out?

[AyKay47]

if they are all separated by an OR... why don't you use explode?

 

$array = explode("OR", $string);

[senca99]

Thats not quite what I ment. The user input is only one of the 6 possibilities. They don't have to be what I wrote down but it just has to be int(s) that can be followed by a char.

The user input is a housenumber. That could be any of the 6 combinations I wrote down. Characters stands for the mailbox number in flats.

[AyKay47]

now im confused, so "OR" isn't actually in your string like you have shown above?

[senca99]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. The line I gave was kindoff a pseudoregex. The bottomline is that it has to check for one of 6 possible combinations.

For instance a person could live at number 66.

The regex should check wether it is a valid housenumber according to the 6 possible combinations of ints and a char I gave.

Thats why I used OR's to try and clearify what I ment.

 

I guess in ugly terms that would give a pseudoregex like this:

 

^[1-9]$ OR ^[1-9][0-9]$ OR ^[1-9][0-9]{2}$ OR ^[1-9][A-Za-z]$ OR ^[1-9][0-9][A-Za-z]$ OR ^[1-9][0-9]{2}[A-Za-Z]$

 

I'm hoping that makes it more clear.

[AyKay47]

in regex the pipe symbol " | " is use as an OR statement

[xyph]

You don't need an OR

 

$expression = '/^[0-9]{1,3}[a-z]{0,1}$/i';

 

Looks for 1-3 digits, followed by 0 or 1 letters