why regex is only validating one character from the field and not all entered

Question

In javascript i am attempting to validate a first name in a form using

var regex = /([a-zA-Z'-])+/;

however if there is a character is accepts such as a letter and a character it shouldnt accept such as a number it still validates it. It only doesn't validate it if it is all numbers. Only letters, hypens and apostrophes are allowed in firstName. Am i supposed to add something to the regex code to make it validate everything in the text box?

Answer 1

I suggest you to add anchors. Anchored regex will do an exact string match.

var regex = /^[a-zA-Z'-]+$/;

^ asserts that we are at the start and $ asserts that we are at the end.