Aha, but you see, all this time diving into regular expressions

was a mistake.

Because we failed to figure out

.

This was a case of somebody “solving” half of their problem

and then asking for help with the other half:

“I have a string and I want to check whether it is a dotted decimal

IPv4 address.

I know, I’ll write a regular expression!

Hey, can anybody help me write this regular expression?”

The real problem was not “How do I write a regular expression to

recognize a dotted decimal IPv4 address.”

The real problem was simply “How do I recognize a dotted decimal IPv4

address.”

And with this broader goal in mind, you recognize that limiting

yourself to a regular expression only made the problem harder.

function isDottedIPv4(s){ var match = s.match(/^(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)$/); return match != null &&        match[1] <= 255 && match[2] <= 255 &&        match[3] <= 255 && match[4] <= 255;}WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(isDottedIPv4("127.0.0.001"));WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(isDottedIPv4("448.90210.0.65535"));WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(isDottedIPv4("microsoft.com"));

And this was just a simple dotted decimal IPv4 address.

Woe unto you if you decide you want to

.

Don’t make regular expressions do what they’re not good at.

If you want to match a simple pattern, then match a simple pattern.

If you want to do math, then do math.

As commenter Maurits put it,

“.

 

 

The limitation with method is that it verifies if a string could be converted to IP address, thus if it is supplied with a string value like "5", it consider it as "0.0.0.5".

Another approach to validate an IPv4 could be following :

public bool ValidateIPv4(string ipString) { if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(ipString)) { return false; } string[] splitValues = ipString.Split('.'); if (splitValues.Length != 4) { return false; } byte tempForParsing; return splitValues.All(r => byte.TryParse(r, out tempForParsing)); }

It could be tested like:

List
      
        ipAddresses = new List
       
         { "2", "1.2.3", "1.2.3.4", "255.256.267.300", "127.0.0.1", }; foreach (var ip in ipAddresses) { Console.WriteLine($"{ip} ==> {ValidateIPv4(ip)}"); }
       
      

The output will be:

2 ==> False 1.2.3 ==> False 1.2.3.4 ==> True 255.256.267.300 ==> False 127.0.0.1 ==> True

 

 

You can also use IPAddress.TryParse but it has the limitations and could result in incorrect parsing.

Note that TryParse returns true if it parsed the input successfully, but that this does not necessarily mean that the resulting IP address is a valid one. Do not use this method to validate IP addresses.

But this would work with normal string containing at least three dots. Something like:

string addrString = "192.168.0.1"; IPAddress address; if (IPAddress.TryParse(addrString, out address)) { //Valid IP, with address containing the IP } else { //Invalid IP }

With IPAddress.TryParse you can check for existence of three dots and then call TryParse like:

public static bool ValidateIPv4(string ipString) { if (ipString.Count(c => c == '.') != 3) return false; IPAddress address; return IPAddress.TryParse(ipString, out address); }