Trying to validate a name field to be sure it is all alpha characters or a hyphen or apostrophe

Question

if(!preg_match("/[a-zA-Z'-]/",$First)) { die ("invalid first name");}

the above only flags input as invalid when the field is all numeric. combinations of letters and numbers pass ok. Some help here for a newby please. thanks.

Answer 1

Adding accented characters is probably smart too, so that "Pierre Bézier" can fill out your form. Adding:

À-ÿ

.. to your regex will do that. Something like this, with everything included:

/^([a-zA-ZÀ-ÿ-' ]+)$/

Answer 2

Try:

if(!preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z'-]+$/",$First)) { die ("invalid first name");} 

The ^ matches the beginning of the string, the $ matches the end of the string and + after a character group means "one or more" matching characters.