I'm trying to validate first and last names, but everything I try it seems to accept. If I input KYle, it accepts it, Kyle, accepts it, but KYLE doesn't accept it. Hopefully someone can show me what I'm doing wrong...

ereg("([A-Z]{1})([a-z])", $name)

I thought this would accept the first digit as uppercase, then the rest being lowercase.

And this is a very generic check...there isn't anything in there for more unique names with dashes in it and stuff like that. I've tried googling help with ereg, but all the places I find just show examples and not how they act, nor really how to create your own custom ereg() function.

Perhaps the problem is that your pattern would match a capitalized letter followed by a lowercase letter anywhere in the string, which is why "KYle" would pass. Try making it go from the beginning of the line:
"^([A-Z]{1})([a-z])"Which should only be true if the first letter of the string is capitalized.

You could also explode the string on ' ' (space) and then run the pattern against each part of the name...

Like awatson said, this regex will match any part of the string containing uppercase letter followed by lowercase letter. I don't know why you're even bothering with case of the letter, just check if the length is correct or not and if it contains any character you don't want in a name. You can always capitalize the first letter in names by using either ucfirst and ucwords function.

The advice of the other 2 posters is accurate. Let me suggest that you don't want to do this. What if my last name was MacArthur? People are WAY too creative with name for anything but a length > 2 or 3 characters validation.

Originally Posted by JeremyMiller

The advice of the other 2 posters is accurate. Let me suggest that you don't want to do this. What if my last name was MacArthur? People are WAY too creative with name for anything but a length > 2 or 3 characters validation.

Makes a good point. I think the best thing to do is let lowercase and uppercase through, but not numbers. Though then again some people have numbers in there name as well, for example "Number 1" or "MacLovin The 3rd".

You make some valid points. I guess I'll just make sure it's only letters, and no numbers or other characters. The check is from a form for adding a new employee, so only a manager will be doing it and they shouldn't really need to try and break it. Thanks for the input guys, really helps!