Here is the regular expression:

/^[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+$/

the ^ requires the pattern match at the beginning of the string.
The + requires at least one of these characters, but no upper limit. You can
use * if you don't need the lower limit of 1.
$ requires the patten match all the way to the end of the string.
The dash requires escaping, hence the back slash.

http://www.regular-expressions.info/anchors.html

Thanks,
Eric

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 8:34 PM, keith smith <klsmith2020@yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> I have an input string that should only be lower or upper alphas, numbers
> and can contain a hyphen.
>
> I'm trying to figure out how to get PHP preg_match to verify the input
> string only contains these chars.
>
> I tried some thing like this and it always returns true if I have one or
> more of the specified chars, even if I have a char that is not specified.
>
> I need a true for any string that contains Alphas and/or numbers and/or one
> or more hyphens.  I need it to return if the string contains anything else.
>
> preg_match("/[a-z0-9\+\-]/", $vaidateStr)
>
> I do not need to use preg_match, I'm looking for a simple solution.
>
> Any pointers are much appreciated.
>
> ------------------------
> Keith Smith
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