preg match: allow spaces in only the middle not at the start or at the end?

[onedumbcoder]

is it possible to only all white spaces in the middle and not at the start or end of a value using preg_match?

[.josh]

~^\S.*\S$~

 

however... what is your goal for this?  Are you trying to kick back an error for invalid input or something?  If the overall goal of this is to receive the data w/out the spaces on the ends, don't make the user re-enter it; just trim it. 

 

Not everything has to kick back an error.  This is something unnecessary, like how when forms are programmed to kick back errors for improperly formatted phone numbers or dates.  There's no reason to make the user go through the effort to enter in something exactly right, like dashes instead of parenthesis or slashes, etc.. 

[onedumbcoder]

I was trimming it with trim but I doubled guess myself and thought maybe I should kick back an error.

[onedumbcoder]

now I have another issue,

 

I am trying to allow numbers, letters and spaces but it is not working. here is what i have:

 

/^[0-9a-zA-Z](\s)+$/

[.josh]

okay so that regex tells it to match if there is 1 letter or number at the beginning of the string, followed by one or more spaces, until end of string. 

 

~^[a-z0-9\s]+$~i 

 

This is what you need.  The regex itself will allow for spaces on the edges, but if you trim it either before or after, the rest of the regex will match what you want.