Form Validation Help

[Adamg]

Hey guys,

I need some help with building a form validation function.
I want to make sure a certain field contains only letters, spaces or a hyphen.
I know I can just create an array of legal chars then go over the input and make sure all of its chars are in the legal char array, but that just seems overly complicated running time wise.
Is there a more efficient way oh achieving the same thing?

Thanks!!!

Adam

[Alan]

You could use a regular expression (which will probably be slower to process) but will look quite lovely.

PHP Code:

<?php
// Pattern will match any letter (a-z or A-Z), space or "-"
$pattern = '/^[a-z -]+$/i';

if(preg_match($pattern, $_POST['example']))
{
    echo 'Yup, it\'s a match!';
}
else
{
    echo 'The field contains illegal characters.';
}
?>

I haven't tested it but I'm pretty sure that's right. :S

[Adamg]

Thanks very much! This will help immensely!