Almost working Regex

For data validation, I am using the following regex: $Status = (ereg("^(^[A-Za-z0-9` !@#$%&()=:;\"\'.?/^|{}-]*)(.*)$", $String, $List)); This works perfectly for the moment. However, I need to add both square brackets [] to the list of allowed characters above. But when I add the closinjg bracket ], the regex stops working. There are no errors, but it accepts any and all characters as valid. How can I add these additional characters to the regex and avoid this problem? Thanks. ====================================================================== Murray Shields Email: murray@globalcat.com.au MU Systems Pty Ltd Phone: +61 7 3351 6677 Global Catalogs Pty Ltd Phone: +61 7 3351 4777