Using regex to check input validity?

Question

I am trying to detect invalid input, where the variable n shouldn't contain any of the symbols: ;:"'[]*^%$#@! , defined in regex r , in the following code:

#include "iostream"
#include "string"
#include "sstream"
#include "regex"

using namespace std;

struct Person{

     // constructor
     Person(string n, int a)
         : name(n), age(a) { 
         if (a <= 0 || a > 150) throw std::out_of_range("Age out of range."); 

        // regex r(";:\"\'[]*^%$#@!");
        // regex r("\:|\;|\"|\'|\[|\]|\*|\^|\%|\$|\#|\@|\!");
        // regex r("/[\:\;\"\'\[\]\*\^\%\$\#\@\!]/");
        // regex r("/[;:\"\'[]*^%$#@!]/");

        smatch matches;
        regex_match(n, matches ,r);
        if (!matches.empty()) throw std::invalid_argument("Name contains invalid symbols.");
    }

    // data members
    string name;
    int age;
};

//-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
int main(){

   try{

    vector<Person> people;

    string input_termination = "end";
    while(true){
        cout <<"Type name and age; terminate with \"end\":\n>>";

        string line;
        getline(cin, line);

        stringstream ss(line);

        string n;
        int a;

        ss >> n >> a;

        if (n == input_termination) break;
        else people.emplace_back(Person(n,a));
    }

    cout <<"\nStored people: \n";
    for (auto it = people.begin();  it != people.end(); ++it) cout << *it <<'\n';

    } catch (exception& e){
        cerr << e.what() << endl;
        getchar();
    } catch (...){
        cerr <<"Exception!" << endl;
        getchar();
    }

}

The commented lines are all the unsuccessful attempts which either result in no throw ¹ or in the following error message:

regular expression error

How to properly define and use regex in the above constructor such that n is detected if it contains any of the forbidden symbols?

Note: I've read the suggested sources.

---

^{1. When an invalid name, containing some of the symbols, is used to initialize an object.}

Answer 1

the main problem is that there are certain special characters that need to be escaped with a \\ character in order for the regex engine to read it as itself (ie, * is a special token meaning to match 0 or more of the previous token). This means that not only do you need to escape the usual ' && " characters, there are other ones you need to prefix with a \\ char

you can than achieve what you want with a pattern like:

";:\\\"\\\'\[\]\*\^%\$#@!"