Skip to Content
Regular Expressions Cookbook
book

Regular Expressions Cookbook

by Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan
May 2009
Intermediate to advanced
510 pages
15h
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Regular Expressions Cookbook

4.15. Validate Canadian Postal Codes

Problem

You want to check whether a string is a Canadian postal code.

Solution

^(?!.*[DFIOQU])[A-VXY][0-9][A-Z][0-9][A-Z][0-9]$
Regex options: None
Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

Discussion

The negative lookahead at the beginning of this regular expression prevents D, F, I, O, Q, or U anywhere in the subject string. The [A-VXY] character class further prevents W or Z as the first character. Aside from those two exceptions, Canadian postal codes simply use an alternating sequence of six alphanumeric characters with a space in the middle. For example, the regex will match K1A 0B1, which is the postal code for Canada Post’s Ottawa headquarters.

See Also

Recipes 4.14, 4.16, and 4.17

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596802837Catalog PageErrata