Regex only checks first character in string C# [duplicate]

Question

Why does the following method only check the first character in the supplied string?

public static bool IsUnicodeSms(string message)
{
   var strMap = new Regex(@"^[@£$¥èéùìòÇØøÅå_ÆæßÉ!""#%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>? ¡ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÄÖÑܧ¿abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzäöñüà^{}\[~]|€]+$");
   return !strMap.IsMatch(message);
}

So for example the following string returns false: "abcლ" but "ლabc" returns true.

Answer 1

You have to escape ] with \] and also put the - at the end:

Change this:

var strMap = new Regex(@"^[@£$¥èéùìòÇØøÅå_ÆæßÉ!""#%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>? ¡ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÄÖÑܧ¿abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzäöñüà^{}\[~]|€]+$");

To this:

var strMap = new Regex(@"^[@£$¥èéùìòÇØøÅå_ÆæßÉ!""#%&'()*+,./0123456789:;<=>? ¡ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÄÖÑܧ¿abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzäöñüà^{}\[~\]|€-]+$");

Btw, you can improve your regex and use:

var strMap = new Regex(@"^[@£$¥èéùìòÇØøÅå_ÆæßÉ!"#%&'()*+,./\w:;<=>? ¡ÄÖÑܧ¿äöñüà^{}\[~\]|€-]+$");

And not sure if using the ignore case flag might help you to shorten it a little more like this:

var strMap = new Regex(@"(?i)^[@£$¥èéùìòÇøå_Ææß!"#%&'()*+,./\w:;<=>? ¡§¿äöñüà^{}\[~\]|€-]+$");