Accept only alpha characters

[86Stang]

I've got this bit of code ready for accepting a phrase:

 

if (!eregi ("", $_POST['phrase'])){

 

but I need it to accept ONLY alphabet characters.  No numbers, no spaces, no under scores, no special characters.  Anyone care to fill in the blank?

[FaT3oYCG]

eregi is deprecated, preg_match("/^([a-z])*$/i", $_POST['phrase'])

 

should work

[Virvo]

Craig is right, and in future releases of PHP (6+) ereg type functions will be removed altogether, so you should use the preg alternatives.

[FaT3oYCG]

sorry, i didnt make that clear, eregi is going to be deprecated as Virvo says so it is best practise to use the preg functions such as preg_match which is the same as eregi with some slightly different syntax and preg_replace which is the equivelant to eregi_replace, there is a tutorial on the php freaks site about the syntax here: http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/regular-expressions-part1---basic-syntax

[86Stang]

Roger that!  I'll replace it with preg_match.  Thanks for the help!

[salathe]

Since you're only looking to check if the value contains letters, you could also use the ctype_alpha function.

[Daniel0]

Craig is right, and in future releases of PHP (6+) ereg type functions will be removed altogether, so you should use the preg alternatives.

 

Actually, it'll just be moved to PECL as far as I know. Maybe things have changed though.