Regex pattern for "contains not only spaces"

Question

Please tell me which pattern I need to use if field must not contain only spaces.

"\s+" means "one or more whitespaces of any kind". – duffymo Sep 24 '12 at 15:48 — duffymo, Sep 24 '12 at 15:48
Case is so important. Corrected. – duffymo Sep 24 '12 at 15:51 — duffymo, Sep 24 '12 at 15:51

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 24 '12 at 15:47

15

Why need to use regex?

str.trim().isEmpty()

answered Sep 24 '12 at 15:47

xdazz

this generates a copy of a string object, not sure it outperforms regex – Jean-François Fabre Dec 29 '22 at 16:30

score 15 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 24 '12 at 15:49

15

You must use this pattern.

.*[^ ].*

It can be anything but not only spaces.

answered Sep 24 '12 at 15:49

Caner Korkmaz

In javascript this regex does not allow any spaces at all – Niklas Jun 20 '17 at 14:12
you may need to add a `/ /g` flag, but this is the simplest answer – Beerswiller Nov 25 '22 at 02:56

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 24 '12 at 15:47

2

assuming you mean any whitespace, not just spaces, \S will work.

Cfr every dev's must-have friend, The regex cheat sheet

answered Sep 24 '12 at 15:47

Joeri Hendrickx

field could be "Hi i am" but could not be " ". It can contain spaces but not only spaces – Sep 24 '12 at 15:48
@KirillBazarov: If your string matches \S it means that it has at least one character that is not a whitespace. It still can contain whitespaces. – Daniel Hilgarth Sep 24 '12 at 15:50
@DanielHilgarth indeed. I think that's what the OP is asking. – Joeri Hendrickx Sep 24 '12 at 15:55

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 28 '23 at 11:52

I've got one, it seems heavy, but it's not that hard to implement.

Pattern with no blank:

^[pattern]\*[pattern without space][pattern]*$

Example:

-pattern: a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ '\-

(note that it allows spaces)

[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ '\-]

With no blank =

^[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ '\-]\*[a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ'\-][a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ '\-]*

Of course, if you don't allow spaces at all, you don't need to do that.

You can test yours on https://regexr.com/.

Susampath · Answer 5 · 2017-10-13T09:27:02.497

0

This is much simple .If you are using java just code this. As example:-

classVariable.getname().trim().equal("")

by this you can check whether that variable contains only spaces.

edited Oct 13 '17 at 09:27

answered Oct 13 '17 at 05:33

Susampath

5 Answers5