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full name regex validation - help
Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 4:54 pm
by mushi
I want to create a reg. expression to validate a full name field. The following are examples of name:
Smith, John
O'Neil, Jennie
Anderson, J.A.
Expression: $pattern = "^[A-Za-z][\s]?[A-Za-z,'.]";
There should be
no numerical or meta characters allowed. For some reason, it allows number and meta characters.

. Please help
Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 5:00 pm
by Chris Corbyn
You needed a $ at the end or characters can slip in providing the first part of the pattern matches.
This is more slick anyway
Code: Select all
$pattern = "/^[a-z][a-z\']+,\s?[a-z][a-z\'\.]+$/i";
EDIT | You also need to escape that dot "." since that's a meta character for ANY character. "\." is a literal dot.
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:43 am
by Syranide
d11wtq wrote:EDIT | You also need to escape that dot "." since that's a meta character for ANY character. "\." is a literal dot.
Neither did he use the $-modifier so he would allow a whole bunch of things.
EDIT: *oops* ... er, the monitor is too small ... ...
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 1:51 am
by Chris Corbyn
Syranide wrote:d11wtq wrote:EDIT | You also need to escape that dot "." since that's a meta character for ANY character. "\." is a literal dot.
Neither did he use the $-modifier so he would allow a whole bunch of things.
Hmmm... as mentioned in first point above

Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 10:43 am
by mushi
Now I get an error: Warning: ereg(): REG_EBRACK
and it also allows any characters.
Edit: it works now

. Thanks so much!