To Ereg or not to preg?

[Anon]

Hi,

What was a simple Regular Expression problem has turned more dastardly. All I basically want to do is to detect if a string has ONLY Alphanumeric chars aswell as a few exceptions such as _ or ! and nothing else. Now some tell me preg_match and others have tried to help me with ereg. Any assistance is appreciated...

Gazoo...

[Anon]

Do you mean like this??

pregmatch("/^[a-zA-Z0-9_! ]*$/",$text)

just add all chars you want between the []
care about special chars who have special meanings in regexp: they need to be backslashed - see the manuals
You can also try \w for a-zA-Z0-9...

pregmatch("/^[\w_! ]*$/",$text)

[Anon]

You can use either one. The ereg functions are supported more widely, but preg functions are generally faster.

Diego