CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpregex
OldWest
OldWest

Reputation: 2385

php RegEx working on my local server - not working on remote host running php4

I am pretty sure I know what the issue is, but I cannot resolve it for the life of me and I just don't know what to do at this point.

All I am trying to do is qualify the input of a first and last name field. This code IS working on my local server running php5:

    <?php 
$regex = "John's Jerod";
 if (!preg_match("/^[A-Za-z\'\,\.\s]+$/", $regex)) {
          echo "ERROR!";
      } else {
   echo "NO ERROR!";
   }
?>

As expected, this returns NO ERROR!, but when I run this on my live server, I only get ERROR with the same data.

I've determined it's the comma throwing it off! And I am pretty sure, because the php version I am running does an auto escape like \' in the name John\'s, so I ran striptags on all output and still the same error.

DOes anyone know what I am doing wrong or how I can resolve this?

I've got about 8 hours in the "bug" as of now. Been through 40+ variations of the RegEex with no luck.

I check and triple checked all of my form field names, vars etc to ensure everything matcheds and all else is OK.

SOS

Upvotes: 0

Views: 971

Answers (2)

Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED
Qix - MONICA WAS MISTREATED

Reputation: 15113

Try checking specifically for 1. Per the documentation, it returns FALSE (strict check) on error, 0 (strict check) for no matches, or 1 if there is a match (since it stops at one).

Also, per my own preference, I use the ~ symbol for my regex's. And like David Powers said (only he didn't correct it at all), you don't need most of those backslashes (only for the period and the space).

<?php 
$regex = "John's Jerod";
 if (preg_match("~^[A-Za-z',\.\s]+$~", $regex) !== 1) {
          echo "ERROR!";
      } else {
   echo "NO ERROR!";
   }
?>

Hope this helps!

EDIT: Also, you say you're using strip_tags? That strips any HTML tags in a string -- not slashes. You need strip_slashes to strip slashes, not strip_tags ;)

Upvotes: 1

David Powers
David Powers

Reputation: 1664

Your regex doesn't need all those backslashes. It should be this:

"/^[A-Za-z',\.\s]+$/"

Also, you refer to using striptags(). You should be using stripslashes() if your server has magic quotes enabled.

[Edited regex]

Upvotes: 0

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