Regular Expression Name and Surname

I need to validate first 开发者_运维知识库and last name from Credit card. For example: "Lange Norton" or "LANGE NORTON" I use this code:

NSString *nameRegex = @"^[A-Z][a-z]*[\pL\pM\p{Nl}][A-Z][a-z]*$"; 
NSPredicate *nameTest = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF MATCHES %@", nameRegex]; 
return [nameTest evaluateWithObject:nameSurname];

And I have a problem with whitespace. "Unknown escape sequence '\p'" What should I do?

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I think you missed some curly brackets

NSString *nameRegex = @"^[A-Z][a-z]*[\p{L}\p{M}\p{Nl}][A-Z][a-z]*$";

if you also need whitspace add \s

You can find a list of those properties (the \p{L}\p{M}\p{Nl} stuff) here on regular-expressions.info

\p{L} or \p{Letter}: any kind of letter from any language

\p{M} or \p{Mark}: a character intended to be combined with another character (e.g. accents, umlauts, enclosing boxes, etc.).

\p{Nl} or \p{Letter_Number}: a number that looks like a letter, such as a Roman numeral.

Additionally I don't think your expression is correct.

Your string needs to start with [A-Z] followed by [a-z]* (can also be zero) and then only one of those [\p{L}\p{M}\p{Nl}] another uppercase ASCII letter followed by lowercase letters.

What happens if the persons name is "René Müller"?

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You should find the correct escape sequence that will match whitespaces. Try \s instead of \p.

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Not sure where you got \p as an escape sequence, but as the error says, it's not valid.

[EDIT] actually, it is valid, but not in the way you're using it.

The correct escape sequence for whitespace is \s. This matches any valid whitespace character (there are quite a number of them, not just normal spaces).

However since you're validating only ASCII characters anyway, you could just as easily use a regular space character - ie no escaping required; just press the space bar on your keyboard. That is a perfectly valid character to match in a regex string.

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Try this one:

([^\s]+)\s([^\s]+)(.*)

Don't forget to escape the \s in objective-c:

NSString *nameRegex = @"([^\\s]+)\\s([^\\s]+)(.*)";
NSPredicate *nameTest = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF MATCHES %@", nameRegex];
return [nameTest evaluateWithObject: nameSurname];

This checks for [anything not a space], then [a space], then [anything not a space], then [anything]

Wont work with name such as "宮本茂"

Will include names written like "John Smith (lots of spaces) Jr"

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I agree with Spudley, but if you insist on validating the name, you should allow for several names on the card. This will validate for an unlimited number of names.

[\sA-Za-z]+

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Mb \p{L} - it means any character from Unicode letters, but I don't know, does your regex engine support this.

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There is really a lot more to name validation than crafting a regex. Here's a PHP natural name parser:

nameparser

If I can't find an Objective C port, I'll do it my self and post it here.

EDITED 2/7/2013:

Here's my port for your coding pleasure:

NameParser.h

NameParser.m