正则表达式：按特定顺序匹配字符串中至少3个字符

Question

How to search within a given string so that every 3 (or more) character ordered coincidence is captured? I am using it for applying some conditional restrictions in an HTML search input... My best try so far:

/[deleted]{3,}/g

I need " del ", " ele ", " let ", " ete " or " ted " to be captured... But also " dele ", " eted " or even the full " deleted ". The preceding regex does the trick, but the problem now is the order of the characters, because it also captures strings like " ltd " or " eded ", which are not in order with the word and should not.

Any help?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Ok, I finally have found a solution that takes into account all of the restrictions. It was a matter of misunderstanding on my part . Sorry. But thanks for all the replies and comments anyway:

Before posting the question, I started with the PHP solution as (I thought) @Tushar suggested in his first comment:

strpos('deleted', $inputString) !== false

But as it did not work as expected, I went for regex. The problem is what I really tested before the question was:

strpos($inputString, 'deleted') !== false

I exchanged the ' haystack ' and the ' needle ', resulting in unwanted results, so I ended up asking here in stackoverflow... Summing up, the solution from @Tushar is absolutely correct. Credits to him. Thanks mate.