Restrict string input from user to alphabetic and numerical values [duplicate]

Answer 1

It's probably easiest to do this with a regular expression. Here's some sample code:

import java.util.regex.*;

public class Test
{
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
    {
        System.out.println(isNumeric("123"));
        System.out.println(isNumeric("abc"));
        System.out.println(isNumeric("abc123"));

        System.out.println(isAlpha("123"));
        System.out.println(isAlpha("abc"));
        System.out.println(isAlpha("abc123"));
    }

    private static final Pattern NUMBERS = Pattern.compile("\\d+");
    private static final Pattern LETTERS = Pattern.compile("\\p{Alpha}+");

    public static final boolean isNumeric(String text)
    {
        return NUMBERS.matcher(text).matches();
    }

    public static final boolean isAlpha(String text)
    {
        return LETTERS.matcher(text).matches();
    }
}

You should probably write methods of "getAlphaInput" and "getNumericInput" which perform the appropriate loop of prompt/fetch/check until the input is correct. Or possibly just getInput(Pattern) to avoid writing similar code for different patterns.

You should also work out requirements around what counts as a "letter" - the above only does a-z and A-Z... if you need to cope with accents etc as well, you should look more closely at the Pattern docs and adapt appropriately.

Note that you can use a regex to validate things like the length of the string as well. They're very flexible.