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Regex format for a particular Match

I am trying to write a regex for the following format
PA-123456-067_TY
It's always PA, followed by a dash, 6 digits, another dash, then 3 digits, and ends with _TY
Apparently, when I write this regex to match the above format it shows the output correctly
^[^[PA]-]+-(([^-]+)-([^_]+))_([^.]+)
with all the Negation symbols ^
This does not work if I write the regex in the below format without negation symbols
[[PA]-]+-(([-]+)-([_]+))_([.]+)
Can someone explain to me why is this so?

The negation symbol means that the character cannot be anything within the specified class. Your regex is much more complicated than it needs to be and is therefore obfuscating what you really want.
You probably want something like this:
^PA-(\d+)-(\d+)_TY$
... which matches anything that starts with PA-, then includes two groups of numbers separated by a dash, then an underscore and the letters TY. If you want everything after the PA to be what you capture, but separated into the three groups, then it's a little more abstract:
^PA-(.+)-(.+)_(.+)$
This matches:
PA-
a capture group of any characters
a dash
another capture group of any characters
an underscore
all the remaining characters until end-of-line
Character classes [...] are saying match any single character in the list, so your first capture group (([^-]+)-([^_]+)) is looking for anything that isn't a dash any number of times followed by a dash (which is fine) followed by anything that isn't an underscore (again fine). Having the extra set of parentheses around that creates another capture group (probably group 1 as it's the first parentheses reached by the regex engine)... that part is OK but probably makes interpreting the answer less intuitive in this case.
In the re-write however, your first capture group (([-]+)-([_]+)) matches [-]+, which means "one or more dashes" followed by a dash, followed by any number of underscores followed by an underscore. Since your input does not have a dash immediately following PA-, the entire regex fails to find anything.
Putting the PA inside embedded character classes is also making things complicated. The first part of your first one is looking for, well, I'm not actually sure how [^[PA]-]+ is interpreted in practice but I suspect it's something like "not either a P or an A or a dash any number of times". The second one is looking for the opposite, I think. But you don't want any of that, you just want to start without anything other than the actual sequence of characters you care about, which is just PA-.
Update: As per the clarifications in the comments on the original question, knowing you want fixed-size groups of digits, it would look like this:
^PA-(\d{6})-(\d{3})_TY$
That captures PA-, then a 6-digit number, then a dash, then a 3-digit number, then _TY. The six digit number and 3 digit numbers will be in capture groups 1 and 2, respectively.
If the sizes of those numbers could ever change, then replace {x} with + to just capture numbers regardless of max length.

according to your comment this would be appropriate PA-\d{6}-\d{3}_TY
EDIT: if you want to match a line use it with anchors: ^PA-\d{6}-\d{3}_TY$

How to make a regular expression that matches tokens with delimiters and separators?

I want to be able to write a regular expression in java that will ensure the following pattern is matched.
<D-05-hello-87->
For the letter D, this can either my 'D' or 'E' in capital letters and only either of these letters once.
The two numbers you see must always be a 2 digit decimal number, not 1 or 3 numbers.
The string must start and end with '<' and '>' and contain '-' to seperate parts within.
The message in the middle 'hello' can be any character but must not be more than 99 characters in length. It can contain white spaces.
Also this pattern will be repeated, so the expression needs to recognise the different individual patterns within a logn string of these pattersn and ensure they follow this pattern structure. E.g
So far I have tried this:
([<](D|E)[-]([0-9]{2})[-](.*)[-]([0-9]{2})[>]\z)+
But the problem is (.*) which sees anything after it as part of any character match and ignores the rest of the pattern.
How might this be done? (Using Java reg ex syntax)

Try making it non-greedy or negation:
(<([DE])-([0-9]{2})-(.*?)-([0-9]{2})>)
Live Demo: http://ideone.com/nOi9V3

Update: tested and working
<([DE])-(\d{2})-(.{1,99}?)-(\d{2})>
See it working: http://rubular.com/r/6Ozf0SR8Cd
You should not wrap -, < and > in [ ]

Assuming that you want to stop at the first dash, you could use [^-]* instead of .*. This will match all non-dash characters.

Set minimum and maximum characters in a regular expression

I've written a regular expression that matches any number of letters with any number of single spaces between the letters. I would like that regular expression to also enforce a minimum and maximum number of characters, but I'm not sure how to do that (or if it's possible).
My regular expression is:
[A-Za-z](\s?[A-Za-z])+
I realized it was only matching two sets of letters surrounding a single space, so I modified it slightly to fix that. The original question is still the same though.
Is there a way to enforce a minimum of three characters and a maximum of 30?

Yes
Just like + means one or more you can use {3,30} to match between 3 and 30
For example [a-z]{3,30} matches between 3 and 30 lowercase alphabet letters
From the documentation of the Pattern class
X{n,m} X, at least n but not more than m times
In your case, matching 3-30 letters followed by spaces could be accomplished with:
([a-zA-Z]\s){3,30}
If you require trailing whitespace, if you don't you can use: (2-29 times letter+space, then letter)
([a-zA-Z]\s){2,29}[a-zA-Z]
If you'd like whitespaces to count as characters you need to divide that number by 2 to get
([a-zA-Z]\s){1,14}[a-zA-Z]
You can add \s? to that last one if the trailing whitespace is optional. These were all tested on RegexPlanet
If you'd like the entire string altogether to be between 3 and 30 characters you can use lookaheads adding (?=^.{3,30}$) at the beginning of the RegExp and removing the other size limitations
All that said, in all honestly I'd probably just test the String's .length property. It's more readable.

This is what you are looking for
^[a-zA-Z](\s?[a-zA-Z]){2,29}$
^ is the start of string
$ is the end of string
(\s?[a-zA-Z]){2,29} would match (\s?[a-zA-Z]) 2 to 29 times..

Actually Benjamin's answer will lead to the complete solution to the OP's question.
Using lookaheads it is possible to restrict the total number of characters AND restrict the match to a set combination of letters and (optional) single spaces.
The regex that solves the entire problem would become
(?=^.{3,30}$)^([A-Za-z][\s]?)+$
This will match AAA, A A and also fail to match AA A since there are two consecutive spaces.
I tested this at http://regexpal.com/ and it does the trick.

You should use
[a-zA-Z ]{20}
[For allowed characters]{for limiting of the number of characters}

How to combine these regex for javascript

Hi I am trying to use regEx in JS for identifying 3 identical consecutive characters (could be alphabets,numbers and also all non alpha numeric characters)
This identifies 3 identical consecutive alphabets and numbers : '(([0-9a-zA-Z])\1\1)'
This identifies 3 identical consecutive non alphanumerics : '(([^0-9a-zA-Z])\1\1)'
I am trying to combine both, like this : '(([0-9a-zA-Z])\1\1)|(([^0-9a-zA-Z])\1\1)'
But I am doing something wrong and its not working..(returns true for '88aa3BBdd99##')
Edit : And to find NO 3 identical characters, this seems to be wrong /(^([0-9a-zA-Z]|[^0-9a-zA-Z])\1\1)/ --> RegEx in JS to find No 3 Identical consecutive characters
thanks
Nohsib

The problem is that backreferences are counted from left to right throughout the whole regex. So if you combine them your numbers change:
(([0-9a-zA-Z])\2\2)|(([^0-9a-zA-Z])\4\4)
You could also remove the outer parens:
([0-9a-zA-Z])\1\1|([^0-9a-zA-Z])\2\2
Or you could just capture the alternatives in one set of parens together and append one back-reference to the end:
([0-9a-zA-Z]|[^0-9a-zA-Z])\1\1
But since your character classes match all characters anyway you can have that like this as well:
([\s\S])\1\1
And if you activate the DOTALL or SINGLELINE option, you can use a . instead:
(.)\1\1

It's actually much simpler:
(.)\1\1
The (.) matches any character, and each \1 is a back reference that matches the exact string that was matched by the first capturing group. You should be aware of what the . actually matches and then modify the group (in the parentheses) to fit your exact needs.

Regular Expression of a Specific Word

I want to create a regular expression in java using standard libraries that will accommodate the following sentence:
12 of 128
Obviously the numbers can be anything though... From 1 digit to many
Also, I'm not sure how to accommodate the word "of" but I thought maybe something along the lines of:
[\d\sof\s\d]

This should work for you:
(\d+\s+of\s+\d+)
This will assume that you want to capture the full block of text as "one group", and there can be one-or-more whitespace characters in between each (if only one space, you can change \s+ to just \s).
If you want to capture the numbers separately, you can try:
(\d+)\s+of\s+(\d+)

You want this:
\d+\sof\s\d+
The relevant change from what you already had is the addition of the two plus signs. That means, that it should match multiple digits but at least one.
Sample: http://regexr.com?32cao

This regexp
"\\d+ of \\d+"
will match at least one to any number of digits, followed by string " of " followed by one to any number of digits.