How can I test whether a string only contains characters in a given set?

Question

Given a string of a mobile phone number, I need to make sure that the given string only contains digits 0-9, (,),+,-,x, and space. How can I do it in Ruby?

Ruby RegEx syntax is borrowed from Perl. As you know regex in Perl, you can use the same here too. — dheerosaur, Dec 15 '10 at 09:23
A potential problem is that phone number formats vary around the world. Unless you know the region and you did _NOT_ let users enter them by hand, the input could generate false warnings. See https://stackoverflow.com/q/123559/128421 — the Tin Man, Feb 14 '20 at 19:34
A much more thorough discussion with examples is https://stackoverflow.com/q/123559/128421 — the Tin Man, Feb 14 '20 at 20:09
Rather than try to reinvent a wheel use an existing wheel: "[telephone_number](https://github.com/mobi/telephone_number)". — the Tin Man, Feb 14 '20 at 20:19

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 15 '10 at 09:18

2

Use:

/^[-0-9()+x ]+$/

E.g.:

re = /^[-0-9()+x ]+$/
match = re.match("555-555-5555")

answered Dec 15 '10 at 09:18

Matthew Flaschen

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 15 '10 at 09:20

2

if (/^[-\d()\+x ]+$/.match(variable))
  puts "MATCH"
else
  puts "Does not MATCH"
end

answered Dec 15 '10 at 09:20

KARASZI István

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 20 '17 at 01:19

1

Use String#count:

"+1 (800) 123-4567".count("^0-9+x()\\- ").zero?  # => true
"x invalid string x".count("^0-9+x()\\- ").zero? # => false

answered Jan 20 '17 at 01:19

user513951

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How can I test whether a string only contains characters in a given set?

3 Answers3

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