JavaScript REGEX pattern matching

Question

I am completely new to JS, and having trouble figuring out how to validate that the input via prompt CONTAINS three or more words, seperated by spaces, only alphabetical characters.

This is what I have:

var p = prompt("Enter a phrase:", "");
var phr = p.search(/^[^0-9][2,3]$/);
 if(phr != 0)
{
 alert("invalid");return
}
else{document.write("phr");

• edi_allen: @Floris- \w will match digits also. Besides that your expression will require, for a string three character long, to have an additional space.
• Floris: @edi_allen - you were right. Don't know what I was thinking.

Answer 1

Use:

if (/^([a-z]+\s+){2,}[a-z]+$/i.test(p))

Explanation:

• [a-z] = alphabetic character
• [a-z]+ = 1 or more alphabetic character, i.e. a word
• [a-z]+\s+ = word followed by 1 or more whitespace characters
• ([a-z]+\s+) = at least 2 words with whitespace after each
• ([a-z]+\s+){2,}[a-z]+ = the above followed by 1 more word
• ^([a-z]+\s+){2,}[a-z]+$ = anchor the above to the beginning and end of the string

The i modifier makes it case-insensitive, so it will allow uppercase letters as well.

Answer 2

prompt CONTAINS three or more words, seperated by spaces, only alphabetical characters.

You can try this regex:

/^[a-z]+( +[a-z]+){2,}$/i

• Boaz: ^/ should probably be /^, isn't it?
• anubhava: @Boaz: Thanks so much, it was a typo, fixed it.