Hi! I'm developing a short series of regex which will help me in validating the input of the user in a webform. I'm trying to accomplish that task using PHP.

What I need to check, for example, is that the string given by the user contain only lowercase and uppercase letters (A-Za-z), blank spaces and accented letters like àèéìòù. I really can't get how to make this, I guess I must use the \x{0000} syntax in a range but I can't get it working.

Every help will be gold for me. Thanks a lot!

The following pattern will match the characters you've listed

^[A-Za-z\x20àèéìòù]*$

http://regexadvice.com/blogs/mash/archive/2008/01/31/A-touch-of-Character-Class.aspx discusses how the character class works.

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Michael

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Albert Einstein

I've found another way to do this, because sometime writing directly the charater to match doesn't work.

I've fixed that problem with this regex:

 ^[A-Za-z\x{00C0}-\x{00FF} ]{2,30}$ which match all upper/lowercase letters + all latins extended accented letters and a blank space (not less then 2 characters and not more then 30)

alexhux:

I've found another way to do this, because sometime writing directly the charater to match doesn't work.

I've fixed that problem with this regex:

 ^[A-Za-z\x{00C0}-\x{00FF} ]{2,30}$ which match all upper/lowercase letters + all latins extended accented letters and a blank space (not less then 2 characters and not more then 30)

Actually directly writing the character should always work as for as the regex is concerned. However you do have to escape metacharacters and make adjustment for the host language's syntax rules.

Ranges however are easier to maintain.

Just FYI, when I replied I provided a match just for the characters you listed so I don't know if it matters for the solution that you came up with since it involves more characters but the range you are using includes a couple of mathematical symbols. I'm under the impression that you only really want letter characters. If so you'll want to exclude characters U+00D7 and U+00F7

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Michael

"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Albert Einstein

You're right... in the range that I'm using there are more then accented letters... maybe I've to use a more specific range.

Really I only need accented letters used in the Italian alphabet, so only some more letters then the one I've specified, but having also the possibility to match other accented letters should be useful.