Getting there with ereg() but..........

[Dynamo]

Hi,
Thanks to all who replied to original posting.As a direct result of now gaining
a better understanding of regular expressions, instead of trying to use other
peoples scripts I am now trying to create my own regular expressions. (Heaven
help us!) So I have started with some pretty basic stuff but would like some
advice on the following. Can the following script be condensed into one ereg()
statement. If so how?
if ((strlen($fname ) < 2) || (!ereg("^[a-zA-Z]+$",$fname)) ) {
$err1 = "Your first name was less than 2 characters and/or contains illegal
characters</br>";
$errors = 1;
}

Regards
Dynamo

[Pedro Graca]

Dynamo wrote:

Can the following script be condensed into one ereg()
statement. If so how?
if ((strlen($fname ) < 2) || (!ereg("^[a-zA-Z]+$",$fname)) ) {
$err1 = "Your first name was less than 2 characters and/or contains illegal
characters</br>";
$errors = 1;
}

use the full quantifiers instead of the single-character ones

^[a-zA-Z]{2,}$
The most used quantifiers have a shorthand representation:
* ==> {0,}
+ ==> {1,}
? ==> {0,1}
Also consider switching to preg_*() functions. They're more powerful
then their ereg*() counterparts.

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[Daniel Tryba]

Pedro Graca <he****@dodgeit .com> wrote:

Also consider switching to preg_*() functions. They're more powerful
then their ereg*() counterparts.

Plus preg_* comes with a pattern modififiers and syntax section in the
manual: http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/referen...ern.syntax.php
and http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/referen....modifiers.php

Well they might be a bit condensed but have some usefull links like:
http://www.regularexpressions.info/ and http://www.regexlib.com/

[Dynamo]

In article <sl************ *******@ID-203069.user.uni-berlin.de>, Pedro Graca
says...

Dynamo wrote:

Can the following script be condensed into one ereg()
statement. If so how?
if ((strlen($fname ) < 2) || (!ereg("^[a-zA-Z]+$",$fname)) ) {
$err1 = "Your first name was less than 2 characters and/or contains illegal
characters</br>";
$errors = 1;
}
use the full quantifiers instead of the single-character ones

^[a-zA-Z]{2,}$

[Snip]
Thanks. That did the trick
Also consider switching to preg_*() functions. They're more powerful
then their ereg*() counterparts.

[Snip]
This 50 year old has only just grasped the concept of reg expressions within
ereg() ;-) but thanks for the tip.

Regards
Dynamo