php only allow letters, numbers, spaces and specific symbols using pregmatch

Question

on my php i use preg_match to validate input texts.

if(preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$/', $firstname)) { } 

But this only allows alphanumeric and does not allow spaces. I want to allow spaces, alpha and numeric. and period(.) and dash(-)

Please help me out here? thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Use

preg_match('/^[a-z0-9 .\-]+$/i', $firstname) 

Answer 2

If you not only want to allow ASCII, then use Unicode properties:

preg_match('/^[\p{L}\p{N} .-]+$/', $firstname) 

\p{L} is any letter in any language, matches also Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, ... characters.

\p{N} any kind of numeric character (means also e.g. roman numerals)

if you want to limit to digits, then use \p{Nd}