regexp help

[nivashni]

HI

I am looking for a regexp for a surname field

I got something like this

if(!eregi("^[a-z'-]*$", trim($_POST['surname']))){blah blah

Now valid surnames are shown below

Johnson
Johnson's
John-johnson

etc etc

But my code above gives an error for all my valids.

Please Help
Niva

[markl999]

All those surnames pass the regex you gave ok. Are you sure you not getting confused because of the !eregi ?
i.e you're code is doing:

if(!eregi("^[a-z'-]*$", trim($_POST['surname']))){
   echo 'invalid';
} else {
   echo 'valid';
} 

[nivashni]

Thanks

It works now, you're right I confused the logic, how would I add in a "(double quotes) to be accepted as well..


Thanks
Niva

[momos]

Just wrote this by hard, so I don't know if it works: "^[a-z]+((\-|\')[a-z]+)*$", but you should at least escape things like: "-"

[stereofrog]

I think the correct regexp should be something like

/^[a-z]+([ '-][a-z]+)*$/i

further improvement would be supporting accented chars

[nivashni]

Thanks

What about the double quotes..."