I have the following javascript code for my password strength indicator:

if (password.match(/([!,@,#,$,%])/)
{
    strength += 2
}

So what this do is if the password contains one of these allowed characters (!,@,#,$,%), it will add a value to the strength of indicator.

My problem is I also want to decrease the strength of the password indicator once other special characters are present on the password. For example: ^,`,~,<,>

To remove confusion, basically I don't want any other special characters except the ones that is present above (!,@,#,$,%). So I did it hard coded, writing all special characters that I don't want.

I tried using this:

if (password.match(/([^,`,~,<,>])/)
{
    strength -= 2
}

But I also don't want to include ", ' and , but then if I include them on my if condition, it will throw me an error saying syntax error on regular expression. I understand this because i know " represents a string which must be closed. Can I do something about it? Thanks in advance!

I have the following javascript code for my password strength indicator:

if (password.match(/([!,@,#,$,%])/)
{
    strength += 2
}

So what this do is if the password contains one of these allowed characters (!,@,#,$,%), it will add a value to the strength of indicator.

My problem is I also want to decrease the strength of the password indicator once other special characters are present on the password. For example: ^,`,~,<,>

To remove confusion, basically I don't want any other special characters except the ones that is present above (!,@,#,$,%). So I did it hard coded, writing all special characters that I don't want.

I tried using this:

if (password.match(/([^,`,~,<,>])/)
{
    strength -= 2
}

But I also don't want to include ", ' and , but then if I include them on my if condition, it will throw me an error saying syntax error on regular expression. I understand this because i know " represents a string which must be closed. Can I do something about it? Thanks in advance!

• javascript
• regex

• 2 Please teach yourself: RegExp – Teemu Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 6:47
• Just remind you, charactors in [] of a regex is not ma separated, it does not need any separators, neither. – Paul Chen Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 6:55
• don't use ma inside brakets [!@#$%] and [^`~<>] – jcubic Commented Aug 23, 2013 at 6:56

3 Answers 3

You don't need to separate your individual characters by mas, nor do you need to wrap the only term in brackets.

This should work:

/[`^~<>,"']/

note the carat (^ is not at the front, this has a special meaning when placed at the start of the [] block)

Also you should use test() because you only want a boolean if-contains result

/[`^~<>,"']/.test(password)

What you want to do is escape each of ", ', and , using a \. The regex you're looking for is:

/([\^\`\~\<\,\>\"\'])/

I actually generated that using the JSVerbalExpressions library. I highly remend you check it out! To show you how awesome it is, the code to generate the above regex is:

var tester = VerEx()
            .anyOf("^,`'\"~<>");

console.log(tester); // /([\^\`\~\<\,\>\"\'])/

Include these special characters in square brackets without mas and see if it works.

You can try it out here - http://jsfiddle/BCn7h/

Eg :

if (password.match(/["',]/)
{
    strength -= 2
}