Repetitive Characters.

[takn25]

Hi, I am getting slightly better with REGEX. Searched everywhere for a good tutorial on repetitive characters but no luck. Could some one guide me how can i achieve the desired result. The thing I am after is to check a string, for repetitive characters for instance a name I don't want a user to input as "WWWWWWWWilliam" what I want to create is to check that any alphabet is not used repetitively more than 3 times e.g WWW or AAA and not AAAA.  Any help would be greatly appreciated thanks.

[JAY6390]

Are you just wanting to list all matches that do?

Or are you wanting to replace them with just one of that character, something like this

$result = preg_replace('/([a-z])\1{2,}/i', '$1', $subject);

Note that this is case insensitive

[takn25]

I just want to display an error to the user saying you can not use so many repetitive characters for your name.

[.josh]

$subject = "WWWWWWWWilliam"; // example

if (preg_match('~[a-z]{4,}~i',$subject)) {
  // has more than 3 letters in a row
}

 

Though I can't help but question why you feel the need to police something like this... you should only be enforcing stuff from a security or practical PoV, not a "this is my personal opinion" point of view.

[Jessica]

Though I can't help but question why you feel the need to police something like this... you should only be enforcing stuff from a security or practical PoV, not a "this is my personal opinion" point of view.

Agreed