ereg help

[sidsel]

I need to check a username field in a signup form. How do I format a ereg if:

Username must be 6-12 characters long.
Lowercase
Minimum one number (0-9)
First character must be a char (a-z)
Only valid characters like a-z and 0-9.

Thanks,
Michael

[Weedpacket]

I always use preg_match() instead of ereg() myself - it's faster.

It would be faster and simpler to do in two stages: first check the length and then check the formatting:

if(strlen($username)>=6 && strlen($username)<=12 // proper length
    && preg_match('/^[a-z]+\d[\da-z]*/', $username)) // starts with lowercase letters, followed by a digit, and possibly followed by more letters or digits
{ // valid
}

[the_Igel]

It's hard to do in one regexp (though maybe possible).
Here's way to do in two:

preg_match('/^[a-z]+\\d[a-z\\d]*$/', $string); 
// begins with a letter, contains a digit, 
// consists of letters and digits, is lowercase
preg_match('/^[a-z\\d]{6,12}$/', $string);
// checks for length. But you'd better just take strlen($string)
//and compare it to 6 and 12:
strlen($string) < 13;
strlen($string) > 5;

[edit] Oh. i'm late 🙂