Help building a quick expression

I have these IDs that i need to parse out...
I need an expression to fit this:
RYY-1264+00-NE120

so .. Letters dash numbers dash or plus numbers dash letters/numbers
and nothing else after it

I have this:
[a-zA-Z]+\-[0-9]+(\+|\-)[0-9]+\-[a-zA-Z0-9]+[^.]*

but IDs like this still test true:
RF-109+00-dC1 (IC36)


Also, anyone know how i could get greek letters out of a string? i have to replace the greek characters alpha, beta, delta with the string equivelents (the alpha sign replaced with "alpha")

Thanks!
If you see darth vadar .. kick him in the nuts

your match is easier with:
/^[a-z]+-\d+[+-]\d+-[a-z\d]+$/i

As for your second question, you can use the hex notation of the characters I think, or you may be able to put them right into a replacement expression if your server supports unicode characters in code.

-Dan

it doesnt seem to work ..
im testing it against this:
RF-109+00-dC1


I have a few question, if you dont mind, so i can understand this a little better:
What does the forward slash do at the beginning .. and the $/i at the end?
Also, for the [+-] should there be a logical OR in there? [+|-]?

Thanks

MOST regular expression parsers expect the regular expression to be "bound" by a character, usually the forward slashes that I've used here. The opening / is the start of the expression.

A dollar sign "anchors" the expression to the end of the match string, so ending the expression in a dollar sign means nothing may come after the match.

The / at the end ends the expression. After the ending / you can put flags that modify your expression.

The "i" after the closing / tells the parser that this expression is case-insensitive, which allows you to use a-z instead of a-zA-Z. Makes it easier to read, is all.

There should not be a logical OR inside a character class, character classes are OR by default. [aeiou] will match ANY of the vowels.

What language are you using where you don't need delimiters on your patterns? If you're using PHP, do NOT use the ereg_ functions, they're deprecated.

-Dan

Im writing this in VBA .. translation some IDs and cleaning up some unicode text.

Here is the expression i used:
[a-zA-Z]+-\d+[+|-]\d+-[a-zA-Z0-9]+$
That works great.

And then for the Greak letters:
Dim regexBeta As String
regexBeta = "\u03B2"
Dim regexDelta As String
regexDelta = "\u03B4"
Dim regexAlpha As String
regexAlpha = "\u03B1"

Thanks for the help ... Your expression got me in the right direction, and helped alot.