email validation problem

[srinivas srini]

Hi
I have a validation for email which should allow only , or ;

the validation works fine if I enter the following in the text field
[e-mail],,,,,,,[e-mail]

but the validation does NOT work if I enter the following in the text fields
[e-mail];;;;;;;[e-mail]

the following will work properly
[e-mail];[e-mail]

this is the regular expression that I have written in my validator class

my_pattern = Pattern.compile("^((\\s*[a-zA-Z0-9.!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~]+\\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4}\\s*[,;:]){1,100}?)?(\\s*[a-zA-Z0-9.!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`{|}~]+\\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{2,4})?\\s*$");
Matcher matcher = my_pattern.matcher(mailid);
if(matcher.matches()) {
do something....here...
}

can anyone let me know what's going wrong here? any solution to this would be very much helpful.

Thanks in advance.

[Ogeh Ikem]

You might find this useful

class EmailTest { 
	void emailValidator() {
		final String sp = "\\!\\#\\$\\%\\&\\'\\*\\+\\-\\/\\=\\?\\^\\_\\`\\{\\|\\}\\~";
		final String atext = "[a-zA-Z0-9" + sp + "]";
		final String atom = atext + "+"; //one or more atext chars
		final String dotAtom = "\\." + atom;
		final String localPart = atom + "(" + dotAtom + ")*"; //one
		final String letter = "[a-zA-Z]";
		final String letDig = "[a-zA-Z0-9]";
		final String letDigHyp = "[a-zA-Z0-9-]";
		final String rfcLabel = letDig + "(" + letDigHyp + "{0,61}"
				+ letDig + ")?";
		final String domain = rfcLabel + "(\\." + rfcLabel + ")*\\."
				+ letter + "{2,6}";
		final String addrSpec = "^" + localPart + "@" + domain + "$";
		String email = "[e-mail];;;;;;;[e-mail]";
		System.out.print(email.trim().matches(addrSpec));
	}
	public static void main(String[] args){
		new EmailTest().emailValidator();		
	}
}