Fixing my statment

[adam84]

I am trying to only allow letters, hyphens, periods and spacings

 

Any suggestions would be helpful.

function checkName( $name ){
  		if(!eregi("[a-zA-Z.' ]+", $name)) 
    			return false;
  		return true;
}

 

Thank you

[.josh]

 

 

if (!preg_match("~^[a-z. -]+$~i",$name)) {

 

[sasa]

try

function checkName( $name ){
    if(preg_match("/[^a-zA-Z.' ]/", $name)) return false;
    return true;
}

[.josh]

@sasa:

 

sure, checking for presence of characters NOT acceptable is an alternate way to go.  However, it looks like you just c/p'd his base pattern, which doesn't match what he actually says he wants to match for.  He says hyphens are acceptable, and he did not mention single quotes.

 

@adam84:

 

FYI neither of these addresses a couple of issues that are commonly addressed with. 

 

- These regexes do not account for length limits.  Most sites want a name to have a minimum amount of characters, or at least limit the maximum.

- These regexes do not prevent values like "---------" or "              " or "- - - - - -" or ".....---.--  ---" or...you get the picture.

[Pikachu2000]

Based strictly on the OP question, you could also do it without using a pattern at all.

 

function checkName($name) {
if( ctype_alpha( str_replace(array('-', ' ', '.'), '', $name)) ) {
	return TRUE;
} else {
	return FALSE;
}
}

[Psycho]

Just an FYI. If you need a function that is supposed to return a Boolean then it is not necessary to do something such as

if($foo==$bar)
{
    return true;
}
else
{
    return false;
}

 

Just return the comparison. Using Pikachu's solution as an example:

function checkName($name) 
{
    return (ctype_alpha( str_replace(array('-', ' ', '.'), '', $name)) );
}

 

[nina_]

I am trying to only allow letters, hyphens, periods and spacings

 

if (trim($string, 'a..zA..Z-. ') === '') {
    echo "$string is valid";
}