RegEx for "only *, 1-n times"

[phillip]

I am doing a MySQL search of the form
SELECT ... WHERE lastname LIKE '$lastname';

I translate input 's to % so I can allow searches on
Clin, ton, Cn ...
This is working great.

I want to disable searches on only ''. MySQL also returns all its content on '%%' so i also need to disable input of '**' and n-times .

Which Regular Expression do I have to use to return an 'Not allowed' if someone tries to do the search mentioned above?
I am rather new to programming, everything's going fine except for RegEx ...

Thanks a lot for your help!

Phillip.

[daarius]

if (eregi('[^*$]{1,}', $string)) {
   echo 'sorry, this string is not allowed!';
}

[phillip]

if (eregi('[^*$]{1,}', $string)) {
exit;
}

Sorry Daarius, your solution doesn't seem to work.

it allows only *-searches (cos of the ⁾

when i removed the ^ it did block n-times searches, but to my disappointment also 'M' searches ... doing searches of that kind is the whole point.

Phil.

[daarius]

put the rest of the search code outside this if statement.

use this if statement only to check the format of the string, and then exit() the script if the statement is true.

else, the program will carry on, meaning the format is correct.

I used ^ so that the string shall only start from and $ makes sure that the only the 's are entered(i.e. * is also the last character). if this is not the case, then change the pattern please.