How write a regex in c to find whether string is hex - c

Question

I am trying to write a program to find whether a give string is hex or not.So the given string must contain only character in between 0-9,A-F and a-f.How can i accomplish this using C?
The program i tried is give below but the regex pattern is not working well.What will be the error in this pattern?
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <regex.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
regex_t regex;
int reti;
char msgbuf[100];
/* Compile regular expression */
reti = regcomp(&regex, "^[a-fA-F0-9]+$", 0);
if( reti )
{
fprintf(stderr, "Could not compile regex\n");
//exit(1);
}
/* Execute regular expression */
reti = regexec(&regex, "ABC123defG", 0, NULL, 0);
if( !reti ){
puts("Match");
}
else if( reti == REG_NOMATCH ){
puts("No match");
}
else{
regerror(reti, &regex, msgbuf, sizeof(msgbuf));
fprintf(stderr, "Regex match failed: %s\n", msgbuf);
//exit(1);
}
/* Free compiled regular expression if you want to use the regex_t again */
regfree(&regex);
return 0;
}

Answer 1

You need to specify REG_EXTENDED in the flags argument to regcomp. If you don't, you end up with "basic" regular expression syntax, which doesn't include the + operator, amongst other things.
It's slightly surprising that "basic" regular expressions still exist, never mind being the default. But that's backwards-compatibility for you.