Form Validation Surnames with Apostrophe

[tpc]

I have been trying to validate a form field Last_Name and have been unable to find a regexp to account for the apostrophe (e.g., O'Reilly). The following statement:
preg_match('/^{[[:alpha:]]+[-]?[[:alpha:]]+$/',} $_POST[Last_Name])

accepts hyphenated surnames and I have tried escaping the apostrophe: [\'], [\\'] and just [']
to no avail. Any idea what I am doing wrong?

[Gargouil]

i am not an expert in rexexp but what i can suggest you is to use javascript for form validation this will save time to users because they will be informed of error before form submited

thing 56k 🙂

here is your form should look :

<form name=form method=post action="page.php" onsubmit="return validate(this)">

...

and put your verification in a js script
<script language=javascript>
function validate(f)
{
if (f.last_name.value="")
{
alert('error');
return false;
}
return true;
}
</script>

[jpmoriarty]

you should use addslashes($variable) which gets rid of all nasty apostrophies. you can then use stripslashes($variable) to get rid of them again. htmlspecialchars($variable) is a good one too - that gets rid of quotes and turns them into &quot; 's, which HTML just loves.

[xblue]

if you enclose your pattern in doublequotes, you can use the singlequote in it without escaping. btw, you don't need square brackets around a single character. if you want the hyphen and the apostrophe to go in one character class like [-'], make sure to put the hyphen first.

[tpc]

I had tried double quotes and the brackets around a single quote but after your post I tried again and it doesn't work.

Originally posted by xblue
if you enclose your pattern in doublequotes, you can use the singlequote in it without escaping. btw, you don't need square brackets around a single character. if you want the hyphen and the apostrophe to go in one character class like [-'], make sure to put the hyphen first.