fix(new): improve error message when project name does not match regex - #3902

It'll be nice to be able to point to the part of the name that is causing the error. For example:

ng new alpha-bravo-2
Project name "alpha-bravo-2" is not valid. New project names must
start with a letter, and must contain only alphanumeric characters or dashes.
When adding a dash the segment after the dash must start with a letter too.
Error in alpha-bravo-2
                     ^

@baruchvlz I agree that that would be a nice addition.

I've been looking for a way to determine at which position a regex fails, but I can't seem to find an easy way. Any suggestions?

@beeman I'm thinking maybe we can use RegExp.exec() to find the illegal character then use indexOf to set the position? But this may not be the best way to go at it.

Something like so:

var string = 'alpha-bravo-2';
string.indexOf(/[0-9]/.exec(string)); // 12

Obviously the RegExp will be more complex than this, but it's just an example. What do you think?

@baruchvlz I've been trying to get the index of the failing char but I'm not sure, it looks like RegExp.exep() does not return what we want.

Here is the playground I set up using the RegExp from the project: https://jsbin.com/yokerac/1/edit?js,console

@baruchvlz I've added an indicator that shows where the package name fails:

Thanks to @delasteve for helping me with the method that finds the position.

@beeman this is pretty useful!

Thanks for reviewing @filipesilva!

I've been looking at the current acceptance test, but the only seem to validate the RegExp, which did not change in this PR.

https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/blob/master/tests/acceptance/new.spec.ts#L58-L83

The only thing that's enhanced is the error message.

@beeman a test making sure that the message is correct, and that it shows the error in the right place, is what I was thinking about.

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