Where I can find a good regexp to extract sector, district and area from a UK postcode?

Question

I am looking for official/reliable regexps to extract sector/district/areas from a UK postcode. I have found a few online but I am not sure how good they are, and I have not a way to test them properly. Do you know any of those regex that can be considered valid?

Answer 1

/^(((([A-Z][A-Z]{0,1})[0-9][A-Z0-9]{0,1}) {0,}[0-9])[A-Z]{2})$/

This matches, in order:

• Unit Postcode
• Postcode Sector
• Postcode District
• Postcode Area

I have a page on my website which addresses postcode format and using regular expressions to parse a post code into it's constituent parts.