Regex to match a string not starting or ending with a pattern

Question

I am trying to write a regex. The condition is that it shouldn't start nor end with a forward slash (/).

^[^/].*[^/]$ is the one I have been trying with. This fails if the string has only one character. How should I get this corrected?

Answer 1

Split the pattern into 2 parts:

1. First Part - not starting with '/'
2. Optional second part - not ending with '/'.

You can get something like following:

^[^/](.*[^/])?$