How to validate a name that consists of both first and surname?

[slimjimscot]

HI,

I am trying to find a regular expression that will validate a name entered in a form that consists of both a first name and a surname. In Larry Ullman's book he has an example for validating a first name:

eregi ("^([[:alpha:]]|-|')+$", $name)

But this doesn't work for me - I assume that is because it doesn't take into account that in my case there is a space between the first name and the surname (I want to keep it like that).

How do I alter the above regular expresion to all spaces so that it will validate my names ok?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Jim

 

[slimjimscot]

Ok, I think I've figured it out; I needed to put another pipe (|) after the apostrophe and add a space:

^([[:alpha:]]|-|'| )+$

I hadn't realised that those pipe characters meant 'or'.

All the best,
Jim

 

[sleipnir214]

Are you sure that regexp is specific enough?

That expression would validate "A B C D E F G" or "-" as a username, for example.

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