if and else statement problems

[ShawnD]

here is the code:

if (!empty($HTTP_POST_VARS['email'])) 
   {
   mail($to,$HTTP_POST_VARS['title'],$body);
   echo("<p align=\"center\"><font size=\"10\">the email has been sent <img src=\"pics/face-woot.gif\"></font></p>");
   }

else
   {
   echo("<p align=\"center\"><font size=\"10\">the email has NOT been sent<br>make sure you filled in your email address</font></p>");
   }

it tests if the user filled out their email in the form, if they didn't fill their email it SHOULD display "the email has NOT been sent
make sure you filled in your email address"

INSTEAD
here is what it displays:
the email has been sent

the email has NOT been sent
make sure you filled in your email address

[bastien]

the length of the variable first...blank spaces are not EMPTY nor are they NULL...the min length for a valid email is 5.. [e-mail]

also could test for the @ symbol....or best use a regular expression to test the value of the email for validity....

<?php
function is_email_valid($email) {
if(eregi("^{[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+@([a-zA-Z0-9.-]+.)+([a-zA-Z]){2,3}$",} $email)) return TRUE;
else return FALSE;
}
?>

And you use the function such as so:

$email = "[e-mail]";
if (is_email_valid($email)) print "E-Mail OK";
else print "E-Mail not valid";

[ShawnD]

um what the heck does that first line of code mean? where did you get that and how?

i fixed the problem by restarting my computer (i do that a lot for some reason) lol. your thing of checking for @ characters seems interesting though....

[diego25]

That's called a regular expression. Basically, instead of comparing exact strings (e.g. ends with ".com", or has a "@", etc), you compare like "starts with an alphabetic character, followed by alphanumeric characters and symbols, then a @ sign, then more alphanumeric charactes, a dot, and more alphanumeric chars"

Diego