Regular Expression Validation Puzzle

Question

Simple validation of a incomming contact name ..
$contact_name = trim($_POST['contact_name']);
if (!ereg("^([a-zA-Z \'-]+){5,10}$", $contact_name))
{ $errors [] = 'Enter valid contact name'; }
As you can see the name must be u/l case alpha or space,
apostophe or hyphen (I think that is all a name can be) and must be
at least 5 chars and no more than 10 (just testing).
The character validation seems ok and it picks up when there
is less that 5 chars, but the max parameters doesn't seem to work
at all - any ideas?
PS. Is there a routine that strips out more than one space
between words, e.g if someone entered 'John Smith', it would return
'John Smith'?,
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi David,
I have tried this and I am still getting an unexpectred
error:
Joe O'Kane appears on my error message as invalid - Joe
O\'Kane (11 Characters) whilst
Joe O-Kane appears as valid Joe O-Kane (10 Chars)?
I have tried both suggested scripts - my code is ...
$errors = array();
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc())
{ function undoMagicQuotes($array, $topLevel=true)
{ $newArray = array();
foreach($array as $key => $value)
{ if (!$topLevel) { $key = stripslashes($key); }
if (is_array($value)) {$newArray[$key] =
undoMagicQuotes($value, false); }
else { $newArray[$key] = stripslashes($value); }
return $newArray;
$_GET = undoMagicQuotes($_GET);
$_POST = undoMagicQuotes($_POST);
$_COOKIE = undoMagicQuotes($_COOKIE);
$_REQUEST = undoMagicQuotes($_REQUEST);
//if (get_magic_quotes_gpc())
//{function stripslashes_deep($value)
//{ $value = is_array($value) ?
array_map('stripslashes_deep', $value) : stripslashes($value);
//return $value; }
//$_POST = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_POST); }
$val_cn = trim(preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ',
$_POST['contact_name']));
$val_cn = mysql_real_escape_string($val_cn); // Just want to
see the effect of this function
$cn_html = htmlentities($val_cn); // Just want to see the
effect of this function
if (!preg_match("/^[-a-z'\s]{5,10}$/i", $val_cn))
{ $errors [] = 'Invalid contact name: ' . $val_cn . ' ' .
$cn_html; }
else
{ $errors [] = 'Valid contact name: ' . $val_cn . ' ' .
$cn_html; }
if (sizeof($errors) > 0)
// format and display error list
{ echo "<p class=\"val_err\"> Contact format
error.</p>";
echo "<div class=\"val_err\"><ul>";
foreach ($errors as $e)
{ echo "<li>$e</li>"; }
echo "</div></ul>"; }
Any help much appreciated.
Regards.
Patrick