[RESOLVED] if statement bug (?)

[PureDrive]

OK, I might be just tired but this is really weird. I have a function that validates emails using regular expressions, if the email is correctly formatted it returns TRUE else returns FALSE; It also returns -1 on a special case.

I have a bunch of if statements that check for the return value:

	$is_valid = validate_email( $_POST['email'] );
	if ( $db->num_rows( $res ) != 0 )
		$errors['email_err'] = 1;
	else if ( $is_valid == 0 )
		$errors['email_err'] = 2;
	else if ( $is_valid == -1 )
		$errors['email_err'] = 3;

The last else if statement always evaluates to true no matter what the case is. Even if the function returns 7 from some weird reason it would still say that 7 == -1 is true. even when I echo $is_valid within the loop the value is never -1 which contradicts the equality. I swear this is some of the weirdest shi* I have seen in a while. Any reason why this is happening?

[dougal85]

I can't recreate the problem with the code you have given us. This leaves me to only assume the problem is in one of the functions you called.

[bradgrafelman]

Do a [man]var_dump/man on $db->num_rows($res) as well as $is_valid to verify that you know what their values are. Paste the output here for us to see if that doesn't help.

[NogDog]

I ran this test:

<pre>
<?php
for($num_rows = 0; $num_rows <= 1; $num_rows++)
{
   for($is_valid = -1; $is_valid <= 1; $is_valid++)
   {
      $errors = array();

  if ( $num_rows != 0 )
     $errors['email_err'] = 1;
  else if ( $is_valid == 0 )
     $errors['email_err'] = 2;
  else if ( $is_valid == -1 )
     $errors['email_err'] = 3;

  echo "\nnum_rows: $num_rows, is_valid: $is_valid\n";
  var_dump($errors);
   }
}
?>
</pre>

It gave the following results, which are what I would expect to see based on that code:

num_rows: 0, is_valid: -1
array(1) {
  ["email_err"]=>
  int(3)
}

num_rows: 0, is_valid: 0
array(1) {
  ["email_err"]=>
  int(2)
}

num_rows: 0, is_valid: 1
array(0) {
}

num_rows: 1, is_valid: -1
array(1) {
  ["email_err"]=>
  int(1)
}

num_rows: 1, is_valid: 0
array(1) {
  ["email_err"]=>
  int(1)
}

num_rows: 1, is_valid: 1
array(1) {
  ["email_err"]=>
  int(1)
}

Is there some part of those results which are not what you expect/want?

[PureDrive]

@: These results make sense to me, this is what they should be.

@: I did a var_dump() in two locations and this is what I have:

Here is my previous code plus my validate_email() function:

//check for problems with the email
$res = $db->query( "SELECT email FROM account WHERE email=" . "'" . $_POST['email'] . "'" );
$is_valid = validate_email( $_POST['email'] );
var_dump( $is_valid ); //prints out "bool(true)"

if ( $db->num_rows( $res ) != 0 )
	$errors['email_err'] = 1;
else if ( $is_valid == 0 )
	$errors['email_err'] = 2;
else if ( $is_valid == -1 )
{
	var_dump( $is_valid );   //prints out "bool(true)"
	$errors['email_err'] = 3;
}

//return values: 1 if correct, 0 if not valid, -1 if valid but not stevens email
function validate_email( $email )
{

if ( eregi("^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,3})$", $email) )
	{
		$email_pieces = explode( '@', $email );
		if ( $email_pieces[1] == "stevens.edu" ) 
			return TRUE;
		else 
			return -1;
	} 
	else
		return FALSE;

}

Does this help at all?

[bradgrafelman]

Your problem is that $is_valid isn't numeric; check for boolean true or false instead of numbers.

EDIT: Nevermind, just re-read your function; instead of returning boolean true, it should return the value you're checking for, 1. Likewise, instead of false, it should return 0.

[PureDrive]

Thanks a lot bradgrafelman, an error like that can really throw you off.