This will match everything that is not numeric or not a comma or period (decimal point)

var result = str.replace(/[^0-9\.,]/g, "");

var regex = /^[a-zA-Z0-9!@#\$%\^\&*\)\(+=._-]+$/g

Should work

Also may want to have a minimum length i.e. 6 characters

var regex = /^[a-zA-Z0-9!@#\/g

You can use:

email = email.replace(/@([^.]+)\./g, function(text, p1) {
    return text.replace(/,+/g, '');
});

I suggest splitting out the comma from the char class and use a * quantified group wrapping the whole expression with an optional non-capturing group around an obligatory subpattern (that requires at least 1 char) (as your regex also allows an empty string):

^(?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?:,[a-zA-Z0-9]+)*)?$

See the regex demo

Details:

• ^ - start of a string
• (?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?:,[a-zA-Z0-9]+)*)? - an optional sequence of (=the whole string may be empty):
  • [a-zA-Z0-9]+ - 1 or more alphanumeric
  • (?:,[a-zA-Z0-9]+)* - zero or more (due to *) sequences of:
    • , - comma
    • [a-zA-Z0-9]+ - 1 or more alphanumeric
• $ - end of string.

JS demo:

var test = [
    "abc,abc12,asdf,qwer23", // correct 
    ",abc,abc12,asdf,qwer23", // incorrect
    "abc,abc12,asdf,qwer23,", // incorrect
    "abc,abc12,,asdf,qwer23" ]; // incorrect
var rx = /^(?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+(?:,[a-zA-Z0-9]+)*)?$/;
for (var s of test) {
  console.log(s + " => " + rx.test(s));
}

/([\s,]\s*world\s*,?)/i

[\s,] let's us either have a space or a comma to ensure there is a separation between the words. Then following it with \s* allows for zero to many white spaces between the comma/space and the word world. We then follow that up with some more \s* before the ,? which means one or none commas. Then we capture () it with a case insensitive, i, regular expression.

---

This should handle the replacing.

<style>
.highlighted {
   background-color: rgb(100,100,255);
   color: white;
}
</style>

<div id = "0">
"hello world"
<br>
"hello,world"
<br>
"hello world,"
<br>
",hello world"
<br>
",hello,world,"
<br>
", hello , world ,"
</div>
<div id="1"></div>

<script>
var content = document.getElementById("0").innerHTML.split("<br>"),
    result  = [];
for(var i in content) {
    // First extract what we want.
    var world = /([\s,]\s*world\s*,?)/.exec(content[i])[1],
    // Split everything up to make the insertion easier.
    hello     = content[i].split(world);
    // Place the result back.
    result.push(hello.join('<span class="highlighted">'+world+'</span>'));
}
document.getElementById("1").innerHTML = result.join("<br>");
</script>

---

UPDATE To fit what @jsem asked down in the comments, I created a function that will determine the correct phrase, such as "hello world" or the many others based off of the search and punctuation.

function separate(search, punc) {
   if(typeof punc !== "string") punc = ",";
   var phrase = new RegExp(".*?(\\w+)\\s*(?:"+punc+"|\\s)\\s*(\\w+)\\s*(?:"+punc+")?","i").exec(search);
   if(!phrase) throw new Error("Search passed could not be parsed.");
   return {word1:phrase[1], word2:phrase[2]};
};

Then used the information gathered from that to create a unique regular expression that will grab the information to be highlighted.

function build_regex(phrase, punc) {
    if(typeof punc !== "string") punc = ",";
    return new RegExp("^.*?"+phrase.word1+"\\s*((?:"+punc+"|\\s)\\s*"+phrase.word2+"\\s*(?:"+punc+")?).*$", "i");
};

With these two functions, I created a highlighting function using the same splitting and joining algorithm as before.

function highlight(sentence, search, punc) {
    if(typeof punc !== "string") punc = ",";
    var highlighted = build_regex(separate(search, punc), punc).exec(sentence)[1],
        remains     = sentence.split(highlighted);
    return remains.join('<span class="highlighted">'+highlighted+'</span>');
};

Ex:

highlight("This is my sentence hello, world!", "hello world");
/* Output: This is my sentence hello<span class="highlighted">, world</span>!*/
highlight("Change things up... sir.", "up sir", "\\.\\.\\.");
/* Output: Change things up<span class="highlighted">... sir</span>.*/
highlight("Give me some options? ummm...", "options! ummm", "\\?|\\!");
/* Output: Give me some options<span class="highlighted">? ummm</span>...*/

You almost have it, you just left out 0 and forgot the quantifier.

word.matches("^[0-9,;]+$")

You can use the \s whitespace character class repeated multiple times:

name = name.replace(/\s*,\s*/g, '*');

Hi @sundhuk, I think you could use a Rule Engine with a rule such as this: NOT $column1$ MATCHES "^[a-zA-Z0-9\^_=\!#\$%&\(\)\*\+\-\.:'/\?@ ]*$" => FALSE TRUE => TRUE Note that I haven’t included comma in this list. You had it both in your allowed and disallowed list but as you’d mentioned it in disallowed, I assume its presence in the first list was a typo. For all the regex characters that have “special meaning”, they have to be escaped with a preceding back-slash \ characters (I hope I got them all!), and the entire list of allowed characters is enclosed in [ ] square brackets. This will also allow empty strings (zero characters). If you don’t want to allow the string to be empty replace the * at the end with a +.

You can simplify this: ([A-Za-z](,\s*|$))* The part within the inner parentheses matches either a comma followed by zero or more whitespace characters or the end of the string ($ indicates end of string).