Only allow certain characters in a string - delphi

Question

I am trying to validate a string, where by it can contain all alphebetical and numerical characters, aswell as the underline ( _ ) symbol.
This is what I tried so far:
var
S: string;
const
Allowed = ['A'..'Z', 'a'..'z', '0'..'9', '_'];
begin
S := 'This_is_my_string_0123456789';
if Length(S) > 0 then
begin
if (Pos(Allowed, S) > 0 then
ShowMessage('Ok')
else
ShowMessage('string contains invalid symbols');
end;
end;
In Lazarus this errors with:
Error: Incompatible type for arg no. 1: Got "Set Of Char", expected
"Variant"
Clearly my use of Pos is all wrong and I am not sure if my approach is even the correct way of going about it or not?
Thanks.

Answer 1

You will have to check every single character of the string, if it's contained in Allowed
e.g.:
var
S: string;
const
Allowed = ['A' .. 'Z', 'a' .. 'z', '0' .. '9', '_'];
Function Valid: Boolean;
var
i: Integer;
begin
Result := Length(s) > 0;
i := 1;
while Result and (i <= Length(S)) do
begin
Result := Result AND (S[i] in Allowed);
inc(i);
end;
if Length(s) = 0 then Result := true;
end;
begin
S := 'This_is_my_string_0123456789';
if Valid then
ShowMessage('Ok')
else
ShowMessage('string contains invalid symbols');
end;

Answer 2

TYPE TCharSet = SET OF CHAR;
FUNCTION ValidString(CONST S : STRING ; CONST ValidChars : TCharSet) : BOOLEAN;
VAR
I : Cardinal;
BEGIN
Result:=FALSE;
FOR I:=1 TO LENGTH(S) DO IF NOT (S[I] IN ValidChars) THEN EXIT;
Result:=TRUE
END;
If you are using a Unicode version of Delphi (as you seem to be), beware that a SET OF CHAR cannot contain all valid characters in the Unicode character set. Then perhaps this function will be useful instead:
FUNCTION ValidString(CONST S,ValidChars : STRING) : BOOLEAN;
VAR
I : Cardinal;
BEGIN
Result:=FALSE;
FOR I:=1 TO LENGTH(S) DO IF POS(S[I],ValidChars)=0 THEN EXIT;
Result:=TRUE
END;
but then again, not all characters (actually Codepoints) in Unicode can be expressed by a single character, and some characters can be expressed in more than one way (both as a single character and as a multi-character).
But as long as you constrain yourself within these limitations, one of the above functions should be useful. You can even include both, if you add an "OVERLOAD;" directive to the end of each function declaration, as in:
FUNCTION ValidString(CONST S : STRING ; CONST ValidChars : TCharSet) : BOOLEAN; OVERLOAD;
FUNCTION ValidString(CONST S,ValidChars : STRING) : BOOLEAN; OVERLOAD;

Answer 3

Lazarus/Free Pascal doesn't overload pos for that but has "posset" variants in unit strutils for that;
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/strutils/posset.html
Regarding Andreas' (IMHO correct ) remark, you can use isemptystr for that. It was meant to check for strings that only contain whitespace, but it basically checks if a string only contains characters in a set.
http://www.freepascal.org/docs-html/rtl/strutils/isemptystr.html

Answer 4

You can use Regular Expressions:
uses System.RegularExpressions;
if not TRegEx.IsMatch(S, '^[_a-zA-Z0-9]+$') then
ShowMessage('string contains invalid symbols');