Pattern · India 🇮🇳

Regex for Railway station code

2-5 letter station code used by Indian Railways.

The Railway station code regex is ^[A-Z]{2,5}$ — copy it below, or open it in the explainer for a token-by-token breakdown.

The pattern

^[A-Z]{2,5}$

Try in explainer → Download cheat sheet ↓

What it matches

NDLS
MMCT
HWH
BCT
CSTM

What it doesn't match

nd
ndls123
New Delhi
ndls

Notes & gotchas

Each Indian Railways station has a 2-5 letter uppercase code: NDLS (New Delhi), MMCT (Mumbai Central), HWH (Howrah), MAS (Chennai Central), CSTM (Mumbai CST), SBC (Bengaluru). Used on tickets, train schedules, and station boards.

Code in your language

Use the explainer's Code tab to generate ready-to-paste snippets in JavaScript, Python, Java, .NET, Go, Ruby, and PHP for this pattern.

Open in explainer →

Token-by-token breakdown

Every part of the pattern, left to right:

Token	Meaning
`^`	start of string (or line in multiline mode)
`[A-Z]{2,5}`	between 2 and 5 times: any of: uppercase letters
`$`	end of string (or line in multiline mode)

About this pattern

India-specific identifiers are governed by various authorities (UIDAI for Aadhaar, Income Tax Dept for PAN, RBI for IFSC, GSTN for GSTIN, etc.). Regex confirms format; for definitive validation, integrate with the issuing authority's verification API.

Quick usage in different languages

This exact pattern — with the correct escaping and idioms for each language:

JavaScript: /^[A-Z]{2,5}$/.test(value)
Python: re.match(r"^[A-Z]{2,5}$", value)
Java: Pattern.compile("^[A-Z]{2,5}$").matcher(value).matches()
C# / .NET: Regex.IsMatch(value, @"^[A-Z]{2,5}$")
Go: regexp.MustCompile(`^[A-Z]{2,5}$`).MatchString(value)
Ruby: /^[A-Z]{2,5}$/.match?(value)
PHP: preg_match('~^[A-Z]{2,5}$~', $value)

The explainer’s Code tab regenerates these for any pattern you paste, and the downloadable cheat sheet bundles the breakdown, all seven snippets, and the pitfalls below onto one printable page.

Common pitfalls

Anchored to the whole string. This pattern uses ^ and $, so it requires the entire input to match. To find it inside a longer text, drop the anchors and use the global (g) flag.
Uppercase only. Ranges like [A-Z] won't match lowercase. Add a-z (or the i flag) if lowercase input should be accepted.
Validate beyond format. Matching the format doesn't guarantee the value is real. Confirm the railway station code against a source of truth (database, API, or checksum) where it matters.

Standards & sources

This pattern is based on the following authoritative specification(s) and issuing authorities. Formats can change — always confirm against the primary source.

Indian Railways / IRCTC

Related patterns

More patterns in the India 🇮🇳 category: