Ah yes, I also forgot the uppercase chars if ($vaidateStr == preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\-]/", "", $vaidateStr)) { /true, or valid... } BTW also as Eric says, the carrot (^) inside the square brackets means "anything but" (negation), thus how this works.. Ben On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Eric Cope wrote: > Here is the regular expression: > > /^[a-zA-Z0-9\-]+$/ > > 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 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 >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > -- --- Ben *print ''.join(map(lambda x: chr(x), ( (ord('a')-(3*5)), int(math.sqrt(math.pi*76)*5+2), int(math.ceil(math.e)*28), int(math.floor(math.e)*35), long(abs(4%3*35+3)*2))))*