Is there a regular expression to detect a valid regular expression?
This is a recursive regex, and is not supported by many regex engines. PCRE based ones should support it.
/
^ # start of string
( # first group start
(?:
(?:[^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+ # literals and ^, $
| \\. # escaped characters
| \[ (?: \^?\\. | \^[^\\] | [^\\^] ) # character classes
(?: [^\]\\]+ | \\. )* \]
| \( (?:\?[:=!]|\?<[=!]|\?>)? (?1)?? \) # parenthesis, with recursive content
| \(\? (?:R|[+-]?\d+) \) # recursive matching
)
(?: (?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\}) [?+]? )? # quantifiers
| \| # alternative
)* # repeat content
) # end first group
$ # end of string
/
Without whitespace and comments
/^((?:(?:[^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+|\\.|\[(?:\^?\\.|\^[^\\]|[^\\^])(?:[^\]\\]+|\\.)*\]|\((?:\?[:=!]|\?<[=!]|\?>)?(?1)??\)|\(\?(?:R|[+-]?\d+)\))(?:(?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\})[?+]?)?|\|)*)$/
.NET does not support recursion directly. (The (?1) and (?R) constructs.) The recursion would have to be converted to counting balanced groups
^ # start of string
(?:
(?: [^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+ # literals and ^, $
| \\. # escaped characters
| \[ (?: \^?\\. | \^[^\\] | [^\\^] ) # character classes
(?: [^\]\\]+ | \\. )* \]
| \( (?:\?[:=!]
| \?<[=!]
| \?>
| \?<[^\W\d]\w*>
| \?'[^\W\d]\w*'
)? # opening of group
(?<N>) # increment counter
| \) # closing of group
(?<-N>) # decrement counter
)
(?: (?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\}) [?+]? )? # quantifiers
| \| # alternative
)* # repeat content
$ # end of string
(?(N)(?!)) # fail if counter is non-zero.
Compacted
^(?:(?:[^?+*{}()[\]\\|]+|\\.|\[(?:\^?\\.|\^[^\\]|[^\\^])(?:[^\]\\]+|\\.)*\]|\((?:\?[:=!]|\?<[=!]|\?>|\?<[^\W\d]\w*>|\?'[^\W\d]\w*')?(?<N>)|\)(?<-N>))(?:(?:[?+*]|\{\d+(?:,\d*)?\})[?+]?)?|\|)*$(?(N)(?!))
