title: JavaScript Regular Expression (If and only if)
body: <p>I just finished all the "Easy" CoderByte challenges and am now going back to see if there are more efficient ways to answer the questions.  I am trying to come up with a regular expression for "SimpleSymbol".  </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><em>(Have the function SimpleSymbols(str) take the str parameter being passed and determine if it is an acceptable sequence by either
    returning the string true or false. The str parameter will be composed
    of + and = symbols with several letters between them (ie.
    ++d+===+c++==a) and for the string to be true each letter must be surrounded by a + symbol. So the string to the left would be false.
    The string will not be empty and will have at least one letter.)</em></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I originally answered the question by traversing through the whole string, when a letter is found, testing on either side to see if a "+" exists.  I thought it would be easier if I could just test the string with a regular expression like, </p>
  
  <pre><code>str.match(/\+[a-zA-Z]\+/g)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This doesn't quite work. I am trying to see if the match will ONLY return true if the condition is met on ALL of the characters in the string.  For instance the method will return true on the string, "++d+===+c++==a", due to '+d+' and '+c+'.  However, based on the original question it should return false because of the 'a' and no surrounding '+'s.</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas?</p>