php - allow parentheses and other symbols in regex

Question

I've made this regex:

^[a-zA-Z0-9_.-]*$

Supports:

letters [uppercase and lowercase]
numbers [from 0 to 9]
underscores [_]
dots [.]
hyphens [-]

Now, I want to add these:

spaces [ ]
comma [,]
exclamation mark  [!]
parenthesis [()]
plus [+]
equal [=]
apostrophe [']
double quotation mark ["]
at [@]
dollar [$]
percent [%]
asterisk [*]

For example, this code accept only some of the symbols above:

^[a-zA-Z0-9 _.,-!()+=“”?@"$#%*]*$

Returns:

Warning: preg_match(): Compilation failed: range out of order in character class at offset 16

Answer 1

Make sure to put hyphen - either at start or at end in character class otherwise it needs to be escaped. Try this regex:

^[a-zA-Z0-9 _.,!()+=`,"@$#%*-]*$

Also note that because * it will even match an empty string. If you don't want to match empty strings then use +:

^[a-zA-Z0-9 _.,!()+=`,"@$#%*-]+$

Or better:

^[w .,!()+=`,"@$#%*-]+$

TEST:

$text = "_.,!()+=,@$#%*-";
if(!preg_match('/A[w .,!()+=`,"@$#%*-]+z/', $text)) {
   echo "error.";
}
else {
   echo "OK.";
}

Prints:

OK.