How to add a blank space character to regular expression

Question

I am using asp.net (c#) and for validation of an email address field, I have the following regular expression:

[RegularExpression("^[a-zA-Z0-9_\\.-]+@([a-zA-Z0-9-]+\\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,6}$"]

This works just fine except that when any leading/trailing white spaces are added to the email field, it throws an error as invalid email. How can I modify the regular expression in a way that it would accept such white spaces (later on in my code, I'll remove any spaces from either side so I store valid emails)? Thanks

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Answer 1

This doesn't sound right to allow spaces and you will trim off later, the regex is helping that scenario and providing that validation (although you should still check server side)

I think adding (\\s*) at the beginning and end should help you though. i.e.

[RegularExpression("^(\\s*)[a-zA-Z0-9_\\.-]+@([a-zA-Z0-9-]+\\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,6}(\\s*)$")]

This is saying start or ends with whitespace

How to add a blank space character to regular expression

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