Re: preg_match - help please

André Medeiros wrote:

On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 11:55 -0400, John Nichel wrote:

André Medeiros wrote:

That's not very nice of you, saying that to people who try to help ;) if( strpos( $_POST['frmName'], ' ' ) === false ) { // Do error handling here } else { // All is OK :) }

How does that match "Firstname Lastname" better than a regex? That will return true as long as there is at least one space, no matter what the rest of the submission is. I could submit "$^&#^&$&#& )(*!@#", or I could submit just a single space, and that would return true. strpos() has it's uses, but this isn't one of them.

There is a large number of sittuations that the regex won't work in. Special characters aren't included (from what I can understand using my weak regex knowlege), you could even be chinese, and it wouldn't work. If you use strpos with trim and strlen cleverlly, you won't have to worry about it again. My $0.02

You can trim whitespace and check the length until the cows come home, and that still won't stop a string such as "#T*& a%@!". A regex can cover practicaly every situation for a name submission; it all depends on how deep you want to validate. strpos() has too narrow of a scope to match a complex pattern. -- John C. Nichel ÜberGeek KegWorks.com 716.856.9675 john@kegworks.com