I'm a moron - regular expressions

Akito

All I freaking want to do is make sure the entire string is numbers. What am I doing wrong?!?!!?

if(!eregi("[0-9*]", $id)) {
	echo "inValid ID";
} else {
	echo "Valid ID";
}

Frederick

You are close.

if(!ereg("[0-9]", $id)) { 
    echo "inValid ID"; 
} else { 
    echo "Valid ID"; 
}

If you want to check a series of numbers:

$id = "206-86-1234";
if(!ereg("[0-9]{3}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{3}", $id)) { 
    echo "inValid SSN"; 
} else { 
    echo "Valid SSN"; 
}

planetsim

If all you want is to check that its all numeric why not use is_numeric its a lot faster then regular expressions in this case.

Akito

I didn't even know there was a function.. but that's cool. I have no problem using it, but I'm starting to learn regular expressions and kinda want to figure this out.

When I just use ereg("[0-9]", $id) it works as long as one of the characters is numeric, but I want to make sure all of them are.. which I can't seem to do 🙁

planetsim

<?php

$num = "123123123asd";

echo preg_match("/^\d*$/i",$num);

?>

Will echo 0 as it has alpha characters at the end \d is just [0-9]

Frederick

is_numeric is the only option you have for check entire string.
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.is-numeric.php

if (is_numeric($id)) {
    // Valid
} else {
    // Invalid
}

Akito

oh... dododo.. okay thanks 🙂

rehfeld

is_numeric() might NOT be the smart choice. read the manual and the user comments and you will see why

you need to remember negative numbers, decimals and floats ARE numeric, but does not mean every character is a number.

either use regex like you were doing, or preferable, look at the ctype_* functions

like this one:
http://www.php.net/ctype_digit

is_numeric is very usefull, but i think many people misunderstand what it does and use it when its not appropriate.

Shrike

$in = "123";
//$in = "abc";
if(preg_match("/[^\\d]/s", $in))
{
	echo "You are a bad person!";
}

:evilgrin: :glare: :bemused: 😃

By the way, the ctype functions require an extension to be installed.

Edit: actually one of my nix test servers has version 4.1.2 - ouch. Ctype seems to be default since 4.2+ 🙂