The objective is to match strings that are greater than 5 characters long, do not begin with numbers, and have two consecutive digits. I thought my regex was enough to do that but is not matching "bana12".
This regex does the job:
var pwRegex = /^\D(?=\w{5})(?=\w*\d{2})/;
Is not this regex more restrictive than mine? Why do I have to specify that the two or more digits are preceded by zero or more characters?
You were on the right track to maybe use lookaheads, and also with the correct start of your pattern, but it is missing a few things. Consider this version:
^\D(?=.*\d{2})\w{4,}$
Here is an explanation of the pattern:
^ from the start of the string
\D match any non digit character
(?=.*\d{2}) then lookahead and assert that two consecutive digits occur
\w{4,} finally match four or more word characters (total of 5 or more characters)
$ end of the string
The major piece missing from your current attempt is that it only matches one non digit character in the beginning. You need to provide a pattern which can match 5 or more characters.
It is less restrictive than yours.
After the \D, there are 2 lookaheads. For your regex, they are
(?=\w{5})(?=\d{2})
This means that the thing after the non-digit must satisfy both of them. That is,
There is ana12 immediately after the non digit in the string. an is not 2 digits, so your regex does not match.
The working regex however has these two lookaheads:
(?=\w{5})(?=\w*\d{2})
It asserts that there must be these two things immediately after the \D:
ana12 fits both of those descriptions.
Try this Regex101 Demo. Look at step 6 in the regex debugger. That is when it tries to match the second lookahead.
