Regular expression '' validation

Question

I'm currently working on building a regular expression that will accept URL's and hostnames. So the following should be accepted: ``` google google.com www.google.com http://google.com http://www.google.com ``` However what should not be accepted is: ``` ``` The expression I've got so far is: ``` ([a-zA-Z0-9])|((http(s)?://)?([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+(/[\w- ;,./?%&=]*)?) ``` However this part of the expression: `([a-zA-Z0-9])` matches on `` and `` Anyone any suggestions as to what I'm missing here?

Accepted Answer

You'll need to add beginning (`^`) and end (`$`) anchors to your expression to ensure that only the pattern you specified is allowed:

```
^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)|((https?://)?([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+(/[-\w ;,./?%&=]*)?)$
```

Regular expression '<>' validation

Solution

Problem