Regex match, quite simple:

Question

Hi,

I'm looking to match Twitter syntax with a regex.

How can I match anything that is "@______" that is, begins with an @ symbol, and is followed by no spaces, just letters and numbers until the end of the word? (To tweeters, I want to match someone's name in a reply)

Answer 1

@\w+

That simple?

Answer 2

@[\d\w]+

\d for a digit character
\w for a word character
[] to denote a character class
+ to represent more than one instances of the character class

Note that these specifiers for word and digit characters are language dependent. Check the language specification to be sure.

Answer 3

Go for

/@(\w+)/

to get the matching name extracted as well.

Answer 4

It should be noted that Twitter no longer allows usernames longer than 15 characters, so you can also match with:

@\w{1,15}

There are still apparently a few people with usernames longer than 15 characters, but testing on 15 would be better if you want to exclude likely false positives.

There are apparently no rules regarding whether underscores can be used the the beginning or end of usernames, multiple underscores, etc., and there are accounts with single-letter names, as well as someone with the username "_".