Is this a good way to code regular expressions?

[miles_rich]

<?php
function reg_check($word, $reg_expr)
{
	if (!ereg ("$reg_expr", $word))
	{
		return 1;
	}
	else
	{
		return 0;
	}

}

$error_counter=0;

if (reg_check("bert", "^[a-z]{1,5}$"))
{
	$error_msg = "First name is wrong.";
	$error_counter++;
}

if ($error_counter>0)
{
	echo $error_msg;
}
?>

Is this a good way to code a regular expresssion checker?

[adamgeorge]

The idea is good... but I don't really how that function does anything usefull...

Your function reg_check() returns true or false after evaluating the regular expression.... the php function ereg() does exactly the same thing.... so... I don't see why you need to wrap it in another function for...

... maybe if your wrapper function did something usefull... but it doesn't. It just passes on the parameters to ereg().

Maybe try adding some extra functionality to your wrapper function... so it does something extra that ereg() doesn't do...

Cya man,
- Adam 🙂

[dalecosp]

An example, perhaps:

function VarCheck($var, $type) {
   trim($var);
   if ($type=="name") { $Pattern = "^[A-Z][c]?[A-Z]?[a-z]+[a-z]$"; }
   if ($type=="phone") { 
      $Pattern = "^([0-9]{3})-([0-9]{3})-([0-9]{4})"; 
      }
   if ($type=="address") { $Pattern = "^[0-9A-Za-z]"; }
   if ($type=="VISA") { $Pattern = "^(4)+([0-9]{11,15})$"; }
   if ($type=="Mastercard") { 
      $Pattern = "^(5)+([1-5]{1})+([0-9]{14})$"; 
      }
   if ($type=="Discover") { $Pattern = "^(6011)+([0-9]{12})$"; }
   if ($type=="email") { 
      $Pattern = "^([0-9a-z]+)([0-9a-z\._-]+)@([0-9a-z\._-]+)\.([0-9a-z]+)"; 
      }
   if (!(ereg($Pattern, $var)) { return false; }
   else {
   if ($type=='textinput') { $var=strip_tags($var); }
   if ($type=='dataentry') { $var=addslashes($var); }
   if ($type=='datareturn') { $var=stripslashes($var); }
return $var; }
}