javascript regex for special characters

I'm trying to create a validation for a password field which allows only the a-zA-Z0-9 characters and .!@#$%^&*()_+-=

I can't seem to get the hang of it.

What's the difference when using regex = /a-zA-Z0-9/g and regex = /[a-zA-Z0-9]/ and which chars from .!@#$%^&*()_+-= are needed to be escaped?

What I've tried up to now is:

var regex = /a-zA-Z0-9!@#\$%\^\&*\)\(+=._-/g

but with no success

Solution 1:

var regex = /^[a-zA-Z0-9!@#\$%\^\&*\)\(+=._-]+$/g

Should work

Also may want to have a minimum length i.e. 6 characters

var regex = /^[a-zA-Z0-9!@#\$%\^\&*\)\(+=._-]{6,}$/g

Solution 2:

a sleaker way to match special chars:

/\W|_/g

\W Matches any character that is not a word character (alphanumeric & underscore).

Underscore is considered a special character so add boolean to either match a special character or _

Solution 3:

What's the difference?

/[a-zA-Z0-9]/ is a character class which matches one character that is inside the class. It consists of three ranges.

/a-zA-Z0-9/ does mean the literal sequence of those 9 characters.

Which chars from .!@#$%^&*()_+-= are needed to be escaped?

Inside a character class, only the minus (if not at the end) and the circumflex (if at the beginning). Outside of a charclass, .$^*+() have a special meaning and need to be escaped to match literally.

allows only the a-zA-Z0-9 characters and .!@#$%^&*()_+-=

Put them in a character class then, let them repeat and require to match the whole string with them by anchors:

var regex = /^[a-zA-Z0-9!@#$%\^&*)(+=._-]*$/

Solution 4:

You can be specific by testing for not valid characters. This will return true for anything not alphanumeric and space:

var specials = /[^A-Za-z 0-9]/g;
return specials.test(input.val());

Solution 5:

How about this:-

var regularExpression = /^(?=.*[0-9])(?=.*[!@#$%^&*])[a-zA-Z0-9!@#$%^&*]{6,}$/;

It will allow a minimum of 6 characters including numbers, alphabets, and special characters