How do I verify that a string only contains letters, numbers, underscores and dashes?

Question

I know how to do this if I iterate through all of the characters in the string but I am looking for a more elegant method.

Answer 1

If it were not for the dashes and underscores, the easiest solution would be

my_little_string.isalnum()

(Section 3.6.1 of the Python Library Reference)