[SOLVED] regular expression help!

[robcrozier]

Hi everyone, i will first of all make you aware that i am completely useless at regular expressions. 

 

What i'm trying to do, and what i hope one of you lot will be able to help me with is to validate a name that is submitted through a form.  Basically i want to ensure that the name only contains letters, nothing else.

 

Here's what i currently have

if (!preg_match("/[a-zA-Z]/", $var))

 

Now, it validates to a certain extent, however it allows you to enter things like semi colon's and apostrophe's etc in the middle of words.

 

Can anyone help??? Thanks!

[Bauer418]

if (!preg_match("/^[a-z]$/i", $var))
{
    // Name not valid
}

 

Here are some others if you need them

- Letters and spaces: /^[a-z\s]$/i

- Letters, numbers, and spaces: /^[a-z0-9\s]$/i

- Anything but spaces: /^[^\s]$/i

 

I'm sure you can see the patterns now.

[robcrozier]

Thanks for the reply Bauer418.

 

However.. that still doesn't work.

 

i used the code exactly as you displayed it (and yes i did change the $var name to the corresponding one in my file) LOL

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

[obsidian]

The suggestion above is very close, but that limits you to a single letter rather than multiples. Here is how you would modify it to work:

<?php
if (!preg_match('|^[a-z]+$|i', $name))
{
  // Name not valid
}
?>

 

The little "+" symbol makes sure that there are one or more letters provided.

[robcrozier]

Great!

 

Thanks for your help obsidian!

[Bauer418]

The suggestion above is very close, but that limits you to a single letter rather than multiples. Here is how you would modify it to work:

<?php
if (!preg_match('|^[a-z]+$|i', $name))
{
  // Name not valid
}
?>

 

The little "+" symbol makes sure that there are one or more letters provided.

Haha, my bad...can't believe I didn't catch that.