regex ugh

[CincoPistolero]

I have a field that is not required. I only want the regex to validate if something is entered. With what I have below it tries to validated the blank data. Is there away to make it ignore (i'm not sure what to call it) white space, empty space, non entered data.

 

// Check for wrong characters in phone2
	if(!preg_match('~^[0-9.-]+$~',$_POST['phone2'])) {
		die('<div id=error><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff">
      <tr>
        <td><br><br>Only numbers in second phone number.<br><a href="javascript:history.back()">Back</a><br><br></td>
      </tr>

    </table></div>');
}

[cags]

There is, but it would be far easier to just use the empty function.

 

If(!empty($_POST['phone2'])) {
   if(!preg_match('~^[0-9.-]+$~',$_POST['phone2'])) {
      // blah
   }
}

[Daniel0]

That's not a very good regular expression for matching phone numbers though.

 

-.........234-.-.23.-.-23-.4-.2-.34 would be a valid phone number according to that regex.

[.josh]

// assumed american area code + number ...
if (strlen(preg_replace('~[^0-9]~','',$_POST['phone2'])) != 10) {
  // number not valid
}