Validate a url in regular expressions

how?

[Clark]

I've been searching Google and not quite found what I was looking for, even though I thought this would be an easy search.

I want a regular expression that tests if a full url is valid. e.g. of what I'd ideally like:

[somedomain.com...] = good
www.doman.com/filenm = good
somedomain.com/filename =good
gobbledygook = bad

If I can get the test to only answer the first one:
[somedomain.com...] = good

I'll be satisfied with that and program around the lack of http:// in the input.

There is a parse_url function, but that parse the whole thing out rather than just being a test.

BTW, I still hate regular expressions and can't wrap my mind around understanding it.

[moltar]

^s?https?:\/\/[-_.!~*'()a-zA-Z0-9;\/?:\@&=+\$,%#]+$

[Clark]

Thanks. Sorry for the dumb question but how would the full code look like? Which function do I use?

OK I looked it up, EREGI, correct?

So something like this?

$inputvar="http://www.domain.com/filnemane";
//note the single quotes around your line, is that correct?
if (eregi('^s?https?:\/\/[-_.!~*'()a-zA-Z0-9;\/?:\@&=+\$,%#]+$', $inputvar)) 
{
 echo "'$inputvar' is a valid url";
}
else
{
 echo "'$inputvar' is NOT a valid url";
}

[moltar]

I am not sure.. I don't know PHP, I only know regular expressions and Perl ;)

[jatar_k]

probably preg_match [php.net]