In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steve Fitzgerald) wrote:
> I have been struggling for a couple of hours now trying to write a
> preg_match expression to validate a dollar amount - the user may or may
> not put in the decimals so I want to allow only digits plus a possible
> period followed by two more digits. My eyes are now swimming and I just
> can't seem to get right. This is what I have at the moment:
>
> if (!preg_match("/[\d]+([\.]{1}[\d]{2})?/", $form_data[amount])) //
> wrong amount
>
> but it still allows invalid input. Can anyone help or is there a better
> way to do it?
It sounds like you need an exact match; note that your regex is matching
against substrings, thus additional invalid characters are allowed to pass.
Anchor the pattern, so that it essentially says "From beginning to end, the
only chars allowed are one or more digits, optionally followed by the
combination of a period then two more digits." (The "^" and "$" special
chars are anchors.)
A regex special character loses it "specialness" when it's either escaped
with a backslash, or included within a square-bracketed character class;
you don't need to do both.
The {1} is implied; you don't need it.
if (preg_match("/^\d+(\.\d{2})?$/", $form_data[amount]))
{echo "Validated!";}
else
{exit("That's not a dollar amount.");}
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