Regex pattern including all special characters

Question

I want to write a simple regular expression to check if in given string exist any special character. My regex works but I don't know why it also includes all numbers, so when I put some number it returns an error.

My code:

//pattern to find if there is any special character in string Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("[$&+,:;=?@#|'<>.-^*()%!]"); //matcher to find if there is any special character in string Matcher matcher = regex.matcher(searchQuery.getSearchFor());  if(matcher.find()) {     errors.rejectValue("searchFor", "wrong_pattern.SearchQuery.searchForSpecialCharacters","Special characters are not allowed!"); } 

Answer 1

Please don't do that... little Unicode BABY ANGELs like this one 👼 are dying! ◕◡◕ (← these are not images) (nor is the arrow!)

☺

And you are killing 20 years of DOS :-) (the last smiley is called WHITE SMILING FACE... Now it's at 263A... But in ancient times it was ALT-1)

and his friend

☻

BLACK SMILING FACE... Now it's at 263B... But in ancient times it was ALT-2

Try a negative match:

Pattern regex = Pattern.compile("[^A-Za-z0-9]"); 

(this will ok only A-Z "standard" letters and "standard" 0-9 digits.)