Form Validation and Functions

[Beauford]

Hi,

 

I always seem to have a problem with null or no values in a string, if someone could enlighten me on why the following work and/or don't work it would be appreciated.

 

In the following example $formerror['lastname'] has a value regardless if there is an error or not. If I echo it there is nothing there, but if I do a count it shows as 1.

 

$formerror[firstname'] = ValidateString($firstname);

 

This on the other hand works fine.

 

if($firstname) { $result = ValidateString($firstname); $formerror['firstname'] = $result; }

 

This is the function:

 

function ValidateString($stringvalue) {

            if(!preg_match("/[-A-Za-z0-9_&'.:,\\\()\" ]+$/", $stringvalue)) {

return invalidchars;

}

}

 

So my source of confusion is this, if there is no error, nothing is being returned from the function, so how can $formerror['firstname'] in the first example have a value, and why doesn't $result from the second example not get this phantom value, and lastly - who's on first?

 

This is just one of these things I just can't seem to get my head around.

 

Thanks

[discomatt]

$formerror[firstname']

 

Should be

 

$formerror['firstname']

 

Try

error_reporting(E_ALL)

[Beauford]

$formerror[firstname'] simply a typo when posting this message.

 

Since I am assuming both my examples are working as designed, what would be the purpose of error_reporting(E_ALL) as there is no error.

 

Thx

[discomatt]

Because you may be suppressing any errors that could potentially be displayed. Notices also help with the debugging process, and they're disabled in most cases