Is there a way in one single Reg Expression to validate a password string that satisfies,

1. Must have at least one upper case letter [A-Z]
2. Must have at least one lower case letter [a-z]
3. Must have at least one number [0-9]
4. Must have at least one special character from [! $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + = < > ? / \ | ] [ { }]
5. The string length should be between 6 and 25.

Note: The above said steps 1-4 characters can appear in any random order.

I have a solution, but the problem with this one is, I have to check for each named group,
"^((?<lower>[a-z])|(?<upper>[A-Z])|(?<number>[0-9])|(?<symbol>[\\$\\!\\%\\^\\#]))+$"

In C# code I would check as,

if (aMatch.Success && aMatch.Groups["lower"].Success
&& aMatch.Groups["upper"].Success && aMatch.Groups["number"].Success
&& aMatch.Groups["symbol"].Success)
{
Valid Password;
}
else
Not valid;

Is there a better solution, such as writing the whole thing in one Reg Expression?

Thanks,
Chandra

The Regular Expression engine is fairly fast, so defining your RegEx string that satisfies your requirements is the way I would go. Here's an example RegEx string which would satisfy most of your conditions using RegEx.IsMatch(inputstring, regexstring):

My regexstring sample:

([a-z]+[A-Z]+\w+?[_]+[0-9]+)|([A-Z]+[a-z]+\w+?[_]+[0-9]+)|([0-9]+[_]+[A-Z]+[a-z]+)|([_]+[A-Z]+[a-z]+[0-9]+)|([_]+[0-9]+[A-Z]+[a-z]+)

Note that I only used the underscore special character, but you can simply insert any number of special characters you want (escpaing out the characters where necessary).

I've tested the string out with RegEx Buddy for the following input strings:

portsMouth_5875
Portmouth_5875
5857_Portmsouth
_Portsmouth5875
_5875Portsmouth

All of them matched up successfully.