Regex doesn't work for the last character

Question

I have this Regex function:

^[a-zA-Z](?!.*[.'-]{2})[A-Za-z0-9 ]*(?:[.'-][A-Za-z0-9 ]*){0,2}$

And basically it's supposed to allow only letters/numbers and these special symbols: .'- inside of the word. It also detects if there are any consecutive special symbols and if there is >2 total of them used. For example:

.asd (WRONG)

aaaa (WRONG)

aaa (OK)

blabla. (WRONG)

bla.-bla (WRONG)

bla-bla (OK)

It also shouldn't allow special character to be in the front and back of the word. I've managed to do everything but not the special character at the end of the word. I don't know where to put $ for it to work. Do you have any suggestions? Maybe this formula can be simplified?

Thanks!

Answer 1

In the second half of your regex, where you match a special character, you should require that at least one "normal" character follows. So change the * in:

(?:[.'-][A-Za-z0-9 ]*)

...to a + :

(?:[.'-][A-Za-z0-9 ]+)