So I'm doing this php puzzle/challenge and the task is to find a string that matches this format:
/^[\w][-.]+([A-B])[^a-z]{3}\.[0-9]{2,4}$/
But I can´t find any documentation what exactly this part means:
[-.]+
The other parts I interpreted hopefully correctly as the following:
/^[\w]
Any word character
[^a-z]{3}
Not a-z 3times e.g. ABC should be accepted
\.[0-9]{2,4}$
It has to end with a number from 0-9 repeated 2 to 4 times.
a.A123.12 or a-.-.-A123.12 are matched.
Explanation:
/^[\w][-.]+([A-B])[^a-z]{3}\.[0-9]{2,4}$/ matches from beginning to end:
Qty | Characters
----------------------------------------
1 | word character
1+ | "-" or "."
1 | "A" or "B"
3 | all characters apart from a-z
1 | "."
2-4 | figures 0-9
[-.] means match either a literal - or a literal ., and the + means match one or more of those, so [-.]+ means a string containing any number (but at least one) of -s and .s and nothing else.
Your interpretation of the other pieces is mostly correct, with these notes:
Note that in the future, you can use regex tester sites like https://regex101.com/ to see exactly what any regex or piece of regex does.
