Input Mask: variable length & special character support

It would make the masking tool much more useful if it allowed these additional options:

[@]  =   Allows visitor to enter any number of letters This would be a better way to accommodate Example A, above, asking for a city of any length starting with "St". The form creator would designate:  St [@], and the visitor could enter St Augustine, St Lucia, or St Miguel 

[#]    =   Allows visitor to enter any number of Numbers  This would be a better way to accommodate a serial number that starts with a letter and might be of any length. If the serial numbers all start with a single letter, then the form creator would designate:  @[#]. If the serial numbers might have one, two, or three letters, followed by a number of any length, the form creator would designate:  [@][#].

[*]    =   Allows visitor to enter any number of Letters & Numbers

This would be a better way to accommodate data that starts with a specified letter and might have a combination of letters and numbers and might be of any length. For instance, if the serial numbers all start with AB, then the form creator would designate:  AB[*]. That allows the entry of serial numbers AB12-345 and AB13726. If the serial numbers might have one, two, or three letters, followed by a number of any length, the form creator would designate:  [@][#].

There is one more condition that needs to be addressed: allowing characters other than numbers of letters, as in the case where we want visitors to submit a URL, and we want to require https://, so we cannot just validate to confirm it is a URL. Of course a URL might be of any length, and it might include such characters as:

:  /  .  -  _  ?  and #

You might use another character for "ANY character", preferably one that is not likely to appear in any data a visitor enters. That might be ! or |, and the multiple-version would be [!] or [|].

BTW, I suggested square brackets instead of parentheses to indicate that there can be any number of whichever type of characters because a form would be less likely to call for data that includes square brackets than in parentheses. You could likewise use {curly brackets}.

I hope your product team will implement this. It seems easy enough to do, and it would add a lot of functionality.

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

Robert

I have passed your request on to the development team. They will review the submission and determine if it is feasible.

If so, you will be notified here of any progress.