[Resolved] ereg weirdness

[vaaaska]

I'm not sure if I'm just being completely stupid this morning or what...but I simply can not get this to work...

if (ereg("[a-z]",'$var')) {
    echo 'pass';
} else {
    echo 'fail';
}

Every $var I send reports 'pass'.

$var = 'Hello';
$var = 'hello';
$var = 'h12ello';
$var = '12Hello';

Additionally, I've changed this to a preg_match and everything still passes as well.

???

[mrhappiness]

'$var' means checking a string with the value $var and the string $var contains an a

stop putting vars into quotes and you don't have these problems

if (preg_match('%[a-z]%', $var))
  echo '$var has the value "'.$var.'" and this contains at least one lowercase letter';

if (preg_match('%[a-z]%i', $var))
  echo '$var has the value "'.$var.'" and this contains at least one letter (lowercase or uppercase)';

if (preg_match('%^[a-z]+$%', $var))
  echo '$var has the value "'.$var.'" and this contains only lowercase letters';

if (preg_match('%^[a-z]+$%i', $var))
  echo '$var has the value "'.$var.'" and this contains only letters (lowercase and uppercase)';

see my usage of $var differs from your usage of $var?

[vaaaska]

Crap, I don't have quotes around $var, for some reason I added them when I typed that out...

Anyways, using preg_match check these results...something isn't right here...

if (preg_match('%^[a-z]%i',$str)) {
  echo 'pass';
} else {
  echo 'fail';
}

It doesn't matter when I use 'i' or not...it's the same both ways...but the numbers should absolutely not be working...so very strange...

$str = '2asdf1'; fails
$str = 'asdf2'; passes
$str = 'Hello'; fails
$str = 'eHello'; passes

Eh?

[mrhappiness]

you don't like the $ sign i used in my expressions, eh? 😉

[vaaaska]

Originally posted by mrhappiness
you don't like the $ sign i used in my expressions, eh? 😉

Woops, you are right (and I wasn't using it).

I'm going back through a few tutorials right now and I don't understand what the '+$' represents. As many times as I've read the regex tutorials I still find it so difficult. Bleh...

Ok, maybe I understand this one...from Dario's excellent tutorial...

"a?b+$": a possible a followed by one or more b's ending a string.

Thanks very much for the tip.. 😉

[Weedpacket]

'%^[a-z]%i'

^ anchors the pattern to the start of the string. This pattern will only successfully match if the string starts with a letter.