Is it appropriate to suggest hints that could be added to lesson hint/solution pages on the forum? If so, is this the correct place?
For example here
there are only solutions. I would suggest some hints:
You will need to use the | character to create two complete alternative matches
Both matches will need to start with ^ and end with $
you will need to use both the + and * in your solution
The forum is such a great resource. It would be great if there were hints for all more complicated lessons. This particular lesson is really difficult if you donβt think to use the | character.
I agree that some hints would be helpful, as this was my hardest challenge so far on fCC.
Alternatively, a less complex problem combining β|β and β*β operators might have made this challenge feel more approachable.
I was finally able to crack it after I rewrote the requirements based on the different test strings:
// case 1: 2+ letter username.
// case 2: 3+ character username beginning with 2 or more letters, ending with 1 or more digit.
// case 3: 3+ character username beginning with 1 or more letters, ending with 2 or more digits.
Afterwards I saw solutions with only one β|β operator, so seems its possible to tighten the logic here.
I feel very disappointed by the difficulty of this challenge. I needed a previous challenge to show the logical connecting up of the various requirements, ESPECIALLY how to refer to excluding non-alpha-numeric characters, when previous easy challenges merely involved searching for the presence of something in a string.