A regular expression to exclude a special character

Question

In Spring MVC For validation use @Pattern annotation like this:

@Pattern(regexp = "???", message = "#i18n{obligatoire}")
@NotEmpty   
private String stringTest;

I want just exclude & character. @Pattern(regexp = "^&") it's correct ?

Answer 1

^[^&]*?$ is regex you are looking for.

@Pattern(regexp = "^[^&]*$")
@NotEmpty   
private String stringTest;

Explanation:

• [^&] captures any character that is not &
• [^&]* captures all characters that are not &
• ^[^&]*$ captures all characters on the line ( ^ is the beggining of the line, $ is the end of the line) that are not &