ereg??

Napster

I can not get ereg to work. Here is my code

elseif (!ereg("[A-Za-z_ -]",$first)) {

message("Signups...","Username has invalid characters");

}

When I test it, I made $first = "Jo*%**(" but that was able to go through the if statment

olaf

what about the if clause? What is done by if?

Weedpacket

Your test is a bit backwards; you want to see if $first contains invalid characters, but you're testing whether $first does not contain valid characters.

Lose the ! and put a ^ after the [.

Napster

I have the if part in another part of the code and it works in a way like this, I have done it before

olaf

what is the code before the elseif?

Napster

if (!$code) {

message("Signups...","Username is blank");

}

olaf

the space and the '-' was the problem:

try this:

elseif (!ereg("[A-Za-z_-][:space:]",$first)) {

Napster

nm i got it but thanx

olaf

do you have a different pattern?

Napster

no, i ended up going with

elseif (!ereg("^[A-Za-z_ -]{3,20}",$first)) {

message("Signups...","Username has invalid characters");

}

stupid french keyboard settings

olaf

you are sure that it works like accepted?

Napster

yes i am sure, cause ereg returns a BOOLEAN and if u go...


if (ereg(pattern,variable)) {

echo "This is true";

}

and u can do the opposite for false


if (!ereg(pattern,variable)) {

echo "This is false";

}

so if i check if it returns false I can use it


if ($var) {

echo "$var is blank";

}

is the same as going


if ($var == "") {

echo "$var is blank";

}


if (!$var) {

echo "$var is not blank";

}

is the same as


if ($var != "") {

echo "$var is not blank";

}

olaf

its about the pattern not the function...

Napster

yes i Know I was just trying to explain how it worked

Weedpacket

Yep, but if all you wanted to do was see if there were invalid characters, you could have just had ereg() return true if it found an invalid character. Since an invalid character would be any character that is not a valid character, the test could have just been

if(ereg('[^a-zA-Z_ -]',$first))

Which is what I suggested in my earlier post.