note 53975 added to function.eregi

Anyone tried to use eregi stop anoying people who wreck your site? In english, I am new to PHP but getting better each day. I couldn't block < or > using eregi. My guestbook I made posted all information without a second thought as I had no eregi command to stop this. As a result I lost mysql DB and had hidden files put on my server using a . before the file name! I want to prevent this and share this with everyone as I can't find it anywhere! Problem is tho I only got this far in making it.... <?php $comment = 'comment left by user'; if (eregi ("^(\\<|\\<\\?|\\<\\?php)(*)(\\>|\\?\\>)$", stripslashes(trim($_POST['comment'])))){ $comment = FALSE; $error = 'Your comment is invalid.'; }else{ $comment = $_POST['comment']; } if ($comment && $name && $email){ #Then this would place it in my sql and so on }else{ #if error display on page echo $error; } ?> It only seems to pick up on the php or < tag at the begining I think this is because the pattern dosn't tell it to look for letters/numbers at the beging, as you can get around it by typing information first then proceeding with the php tag. Any ideas are welcome as this sort problem can cost a lot of time. Liam ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.eregi.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+53975 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53975&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53975&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53975&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53975&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: non-english -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53975&report=yes&reason=non-english Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53975&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+53975&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php