Regex for matching expression that consists of single digit numbers and operators

Question

I would like to create a regex that will validate that a string is an equation made up of a single digits and either the * or + operator and is no longer than 100 characters. So these would be valid:

1+2*3*8+0
9
9*9

And these would not be valid:

1++1
12+1
2*25
1+
47
+
+1
11

I came up with the regex below to accomplish this:

^(\d{1}[\+\*]{1}){0,99}\d$

Which appears to work, but I'm curious if there is a cleaner way to accomplish this. Any suggestions or is this about as clean as it gets?

It is saved here if you would like to play with it.

Answer 1

• While your regex appears to work, it will fail for the condition that your expression should not exceed 100 characters mark. With the boundary of {0,99} on a 2 character pattern \d{1}[\*\+]{1}, you are already expecting a possible expression of length 198 characters.
• Using {1} quantifier is just redundant.
• No need for escaping inside a character set. The only things needing a leading backslash (\) inside a characters list are ] and ^, where the caret is the only character inside, or the first.
• Your expressions will not reach a 100 character mark, unless you allow the + to act as an unary operator.

Therefore, the following pattern will be the simplest approach (imo)

^(?:\d[*+]){0,49}\d$

which is the tiniest bit modified from your original expression.

You can check the pattern in action here on the following expressions:

1+2*3*8+0
9
9*9
1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+5*8

1++1
12+1
2*25
1+
47
+
+1
11
1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+1*2+5*8+9

Answer 2

Explicit length check for clarity

You checked the length of the string inside the regular expression, it was not obvious and @hjpotter92 found a bug in it. His fix uses half of the desired length inside the regexp making it even less intuitive.

I suggest using as a regexp ^(?:\d[*+])*\d$ and checking the length separately.