eregi and emails

hey all look at this code..... i input kurth@usaexpress.net and its returns true...i input kurth@usaexpress.au or kurth@usaexpress.com.au and i get false....looking at my regexp i see nothing wrong....does somebody else? if (eregi("^[_\.0-9a-z-]+@([0-9a-z][-0-9a-z\.]+)\.([a-z]{2,3}$)", $email, $check)) { ~kurth Kurth Bemis - Network/Systems Administrator, USAExpress.net/Ozone Computer There is no sin except stupidity. -- Oscar Wilde kurth@usaexpress.net | http://www.usaexpress.net/kurth PGP key available - http://www.usaexpress.net/kurth/pgp Fight Weak Encryption! Donate your wasted CPU cycles to Distributed.net (http://www.distributed.net)