How to check if a Regex expression matches an entire string in c#?
c#, regex
Solution
You would normally use the start end end anchors `^` and `$` respecitvely:
^\s*A*\s*$
Keep in mind that, if you regex engine supports multi-line, this may also capture strings that span multiple lines as long as one of those lines matches the regex(since `^` then anchors after any newline or string-start and `$` before any newline or string end). If you're only running the regex against a single line, that won't be a problem.
If you want to ensure that a multi-line input is only a single line consisting of your pattern, you can use `\A` and `\Z` if supported - these mean start and end of string regardless of newlines.
Problem
I am new to regex expressions so sorry if this is a really noob question. I have a regex expression... What I want to do is check if a string matches the regex expression in its entirety without the regex expression matching any subsets of the string. For example... If my regex expression is looking for a match of \sA\s*, it should return a match if the string it is comparing it to is " A " but if it compares to the string " A B" it should not return a match. Any help would be appreciated? I code in C#.