this is true, But when String = “+41+(-12)*(-12)+11(-2)”, this show wrong.
plz send generalize formate for pattern.

hanks
Bambam

Excellent question! The “Canada Only” was actually bug fix/enhancement in a later Flex 3 SDK. It wasn’t available when I did this post, but I really should update this post with that new information since it seems like overkill to use a simple RegEx validator when the ZipCodeValidator would do (unless you want to do more complex Canadian postal code validations as mentioned previously in some other reader comments).

Thanks,
Peter

Anyway, it’s nice to know about the POSIX support

Cheers,

Matt

I am a frequent visitor to your blog and recently came across this article on Validating data using Regular Expressions. For a while now, I have been working on a sophisticated regular expression application and was just able to publish it this past week. Considering your interest and expertise with Flex and regular expressions, I thought you might be interested in it.

The app is called the Flex 3 Regular Expression Explorer and can be found at my blog below.

http://blog.ryanswanson.com/2008/10/introducing-flex-3-regular-expression.html

The application is similar to the Flex Component and Style Explorers created by Adobe, but I have also added a collaborative community section where people can post their own regular expression examples as well as a full-feature help panel to get novices started with the technology.

Hope you like it!

Cheers,
Ryan

p.s. Considering your obvious abilities with Flex and regular expressions, I would be very grateful if you were a contributor to the Regular Expression Explorer community! The more we work together, the more we all profit. :)

http://www.dc.turkuamk.fi/docs/gnu/rx/rx_3.html

The link also mentions how you can use inverted character classes such as the following:

[^[:space:]] - all non-whitespace characters

According to Ben Forta’s “Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes” book (First edition, page 121), the following regular expression should work for Canadian postal codes:

[ABCEGHJKLMNPRSTVXY]\d[A-Z] \d[A-Z]\d

Note that the D, F, I, O, Q, U, and Z characters are omited from the first allowed character range, but allowable in alphabetic later ranges.

Peter

Thanks for the tip/clarification! Flex (or more accurately Flash Player 9) does allow POSIX classes, as it turns out! I updated the entry above to show the POSIX style and admit to my own ignorance of the Canadian Postal system.

Peter

^[A-CEG-NPR-TVXY][[:digit:]][A-CEG-NPR-TVW-Z]( |-)?[[:digit:]][A-CEG-NPR-TVW-Z][[:digit:]]$

The above regex is more CF specific, but easy to adapt. I’m not sure if Flex allow posix classes.