Regex
regex
December 24, 20222 min read

Regex for only words

A word is a unit of information that represents one or more letters i.e., from a-z or A-Z. In this article let's understand how we can create a regex for word and how regex can be matched for a given word.

Regex (short for regular expression) is a powerful tool used for searching and manipulating text. It is composed of a sequence of words that define a search pattern. Regex can be used to find patterns in large amounts of text, validate user input, and manipulate strings. It is widely used in programming languages, text editors, and command line tools.

Structure of a word

The word should have the following criteria and structure-

  • a word is a unit of information that represents one or group of letters from a-z or A-Z
  • It should contain only words.

Regex for checking if only words is valid or not

Regular Expression for word-

/^[a-z ]+$/igm

Test string examples for the above regex-

Input StringMatch Output
hellomatches
how are you?does not match
2matches
Amatches
;matches

Note the i modifier in the regex takes care of the UPPERCASE letters.

Here is a detailed explanation of the above regex-

/^[a-z ]+$/igm

Match a single character present in the list below [a-z ]
+ matches the previous token between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
a-z matches a single character in the range between a (index 97) and z (index 122) (case insensitive)
  matches the character   with index 3210 (2016 or 408) literally (case insensitive)
Global pattern flags
m modifier: multi line. Causes ^ and $ to match the begin/end of each line (not only begin/end of string)
g modifier: global. All matches (don't return after first match)
i modifier: insensitive. Case insensitive match (ignores case of [a-zA-Z])

Hope this article was useful to check if the string are valid words or not.

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About the Author
Satvik
Satvik
Entrepreneur
Satvik is a passionate developer turned Entrepreneur. He is fascinated by JavaScript, Operating System, Deep Learning, AR/VR. He has published several research papers and applied for patents in the field as well. Satvik is a speaker in conferences, meetups talking about Artificial Intelligence, JavaScript and related subjects. His goal is to solve complex problems that people face with automation. Related projects can be seen at - [Projects](/projects)
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