regex - How do I use a regular expression to match any string, but at least 3 characters?

Question

I am not a regex expert, but my request is simple: I need to match any string that has at least 3 or more characters that are matching.

So for instance, we have the string "hello world" and matching it with the following:

"he" => false // only 2 characters
"hel" => true // 3 characters match found

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2590286/how-do-i-use-a-regular-expression-to-match-any-string-but-at-least-3-characters

Answer 1

This is python regex, but it probably works in other languages that implement it, too.

I guess it depends on what you consider a character to be. If it's letters, numbers, and underscores:

w{3,}

if just letters and digits:

[a-zA-Z0-9]{3,}

Python also has a regex method to return all matches from a string.

>>> import re
>>> re.findall(r'w{3,}', 'This is a long string, yes it is.')
['This', 'long', 'string', 'yes']