Regular Expressions! ..php ereg?

TomaHawk · 3 Mar 2008 at 20:16

Hey,

Haven't done regular expressions in awhile and just trying to piece together some validation rules for a few input forms.

I want to catch any input that is NOT alphanumeric, so ALL symbols/illegal characters etc. BUT the problem is I want to allow spaces.

So my question is, what symbol is it to exclude (or include depending on how you look at it) from being matched. As currently I have the following which works as I want except for the spaces being picked up as invalid!

Code:

(ereg("[^A-Za-z0-9]|[0-9]", $this->jobtitle))

^ obviously this is wrapped in an if statement.

Have tried googling, but I keep getting loads of tutorials on how to do regular expressions with examples for matching email addresses and the like; not how each symbol is handled etc.

Any help greatly appreciated,
Many thanks.

Lewis.

paulhuk2 · 3 Mar 2008 at 20:24

Give this a bash:

if (preg_match('/^[a-z0-9 ]$/i', $this->jobtitle)) {
// only contains alpha-numeric chars or spaces
}

TomaHawk · 3 Mar 2008 at 20:45

paulhuk2 said:
Give this a bash:

if (preg_match('/^[a-z0-9 ]$/i', $this->jobtitle)) {
// only contains alpha-numeric chars or spaces
}

That hasn't worked unfortunately, as it's now allowing symbols. Spaces are now valid but all symbols should be invalid.
Appreciate reply though!

paulhuk2 · 3 Mar 2008 at 21:08

if (preg_match('/^([a-z0-9 ])+$/i', $this->jobtitle) > 0) { }

This one seems to do it right now

TomaHawk · 3 Mar 2008 at 23:22

paulhuk2 said:
if (preg_match('/^([a-z0-9 ])+$/i', $this->jobtitle) > 0) { }

This one seems to do it right now

Nice one got it sorted now! ..also looked up preg_match in more detail.
Thanks again.