Email validator rejecting emails with dashes?

can't figure out what to change

[Doood]

My contact form gives an error message when you enter an email with dashes in it, but I don't know why.

I removed the dashes from the code I thought were the culprit but it's still rejecting dashes. Look at the code and see if you can find it.

Here's the original code,

if(ereg("^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.) ¦(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}¦[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$", $var)) { 
 return TRUE;
 } else {
 return FALSE;
 }

and so I removed the dashes "-" that I thought would fix it but didn't.

Here's what it looks like now,

if(ereg("^([a-zA-Z0-9_\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.) ¦(([a-zA-Z0-9]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}¦[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$", $var)) { 
 return TRUE;
 } else {
 return FALSE;
 }

Can you find it? Am I missing the obvious?

[edited by: dreamcatcher at 9:09 am (utc) on Dec. 21, 2007]
[edit reason] fixed side scroll [/edit]

[omoutop]

perhaps this will do the trick?

preg_match('/^[a-z0-9.+_-]+@([a-z0-9-]+.)+[a-z]+$/i', $_POST['email'])

[henry0]

Or maybe that one :)

<?php
function validate_email($email)
{
// Create the syntactical validation regular expression
$regexp = "^([_a-z0-9-]+)(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@([a-z0-9-]+)(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*(\.[a-z]{2,4})$";

// Presume that the email is invalid
$valid = 0;

// Validate the syntax
if (eregi($regexp, $email))
{
list($username,$domaintld) = split("@",$email);

// Validate the domain
if (getmxrr($domaintld,$mxrecords))
$valid = 1;
} else {
$valid = 0;
}

return $valid;

}
?>

Keep adding suggestions and comments....

[justgowithit]

Note: preg_match(), which uses a Perl-compatible regular expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to ereg().

[omoutop]

imho:

true if you want to use regular expressions on a large volume of data (scan the pages of a book and replace a name instance for another one, for example).

in case of validating a single email adress, even if you force the server to perform some thousants such checks, you wont notice a significant improvement on speed.

Either way, this is a good note to keep in mind.

[henry0]

I use mine for validating new registrant
I guess I should wish that site to have thousands of new users per hour :)

[Doood]

I kind of don't want to rewrite the whole script cause it's being used in about a dozen or so locations.

I'm thinking now that dashes just need to be added to the ereg part so they will be allowed.

[justgowithit]

I try to squeeze as much optimization out of my scripts as possible. If there's an instance where I can increase performance by .001 second and there are thousands of such instances throughout the structure of an application I feel the attention to detail is justified. :)