I need to break the following string into seperate 8 seperate groups  "key:val:key:val:key:val:key:val" I really want to avoid using this ugly regex ([^:]*):([^:]*):([^:]*):([^:]*):([^:]*):([^:]*):([^:]*):([^:]*) So i've tried using a passive group and a quantifier (?:([^:]*):){1,6}([^\s])+   The problem is that ...

Hi, I have a validation criteria which says: a number cannot start with "000" which is 9 digits in length. And it needs to be in one expression. Can somebody help me in writing a regular expression for this? Thank you