In SMF2.0, regular expressions can be used in the Advanced Settings when creating or editing a custom profile field.
NOTE - When entering regular expression (regex), you must surround them with delimiters such as tildes (~) or double quotes ("), otherwise they will not work and there will be no warning of this failure. Two examples of the correct way of entering regular expressions for SMF: ~[12][0-9]{3}~ or "[12][0-9]{3}"
The input mask is important for your forum's security. Validating the input from a user can help ensure that data is not used in a way you do not expect. Here ares ome examples of simple regular expressions:
"[A-Za-z]+"
- Match all upper and lower case alphabet characters."[0-9]+"
- Match all numeric characters."[A-Za-z0-9]{7}"
- Match all upper and lower case alphabet and numeric characters seven times."[^0-9]?"
- Forbid any number from being matched."^([A-Fa-f0-9]{3}|[A-Fa-f0-9]{6})$"
- Only allow 3 or 6 character hexcodes.
Additionally, special metacharacters such as ?+*^$ and {xx} can be defined:
- ? - None or one match of previous expression.
- + - One or more of previous expression.
- * - None or more of previous expression.
- {xx} - An exact number from previous expression.
- {xx,} - An exact number or more from previous expression.
- {,xx} - An exact number or less from previous expression.
- {xx,yy} - An exact match between the two numbers from previous expression.
- ^ - Start of string.
- $ - End of string.
- \ - Escapes the next character.