ereg not behaving as expected

[msaspence]

I'm having a problem with the ereg function to verify a user submitted variable

the situation is that the user is submitting a textarea post variable
there are a number of allowed characters
there are more in the actual application but i have removed to demonstrate the problem as removing them makes no difference
the php code is as follows

$message=$_POST['textarea1'];
if (ereg("^{[A-Za-z0-9\n]*$",$message))} {
$textValid=TRUE;
} else {
echo "error";
}

but it seems to act like

$message=$_POST['textarea1'];
if (ereg("^{[A-Za-z0-9]*$",$message))} {
$textValid=TRUE;
} else {
echo "error";
}

[NogDog]

Not sure, but you may need to escape that backslash if your regex is within double quotes:

// either:
if (ereg("^[A-Za-z0-9\\n]*$",$message)) {
// or else use single quotes:
if (ereg('^[A-Za-z0-9\n]*$',$message)) {

[xblue]

I take it from what you are saying that if linebreaks are submitted, your code would reject the text though you intended to allow linebreaks?

If so, adding the carriage return may be worth a try:

if (preg_match("/^[A-Za-z0-9\r\n]*$/",$message)) { 

(silently switched to preg_match which I would recommend to use)