How to match up to second letter using regex?

Question

How would I match "22A00" in the following string: "22A00B20A" using a regular expression?

Answer 1

You can use this:

/^[^a-zA-Z]*[a-zA-Z][^a-zA-Z]*/

Explanation:

^          Start of line
[^a-zA-Z]* Zero or more non-letters
[a-zA-Z]   A letter
[^a-zA-Z]* Zero or more non-letters

Regular expressions are greedy by default so this ensure that it will find the longest match. If there is no second letter it will match the entire string. If there is no first letter it will fail to match. If this isn't what you want then please specify what should happen in these special cases.

You may also want to consider what you mean by "letter". This regular expression won't match foreign letters.

Answer 2

If you are talking about that literal string

if( /22A00/.test("22A00B20A") )
    // match

otherwise, look to @Marks answer