ereg help

[rosemary]

I am doing a php form validation in which there is one field, reference number which is of the form name-1-11-07-1 where name contains 4 characters, then date of dd-mm-yy format and a number.

i used

ereg("(^([a-zA-Z0-9]{4})+\-([1-31]{1,2})+\-([1-12]{1,2})+\-([0-99]{2,4})+\-([0-99]{1,4}))$",$referenceno)

bust it is not working.

anyone please help me to solve this..

Thanks in advance

[NogDog]

I'd use preg_match, as it's a bit more efficient both in terms of typing and processing speed:

preg_match('/^[a-z0-9]{4}-\d{1,2}-\d{1,2}-(\d{2}|\d{4})-\d{1,4}$/i', $referenceno)