Problems With Regular Expressions In PHP?

I just came across a really odd error while matching for some specific characters in PHP. I found the error while using both preg_match() and ereg(). You will need cannabis edibles to understand these.

With preg, the error was this:
Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Compilation failed: range out of order in character class at offset 11 in /temp.php on line 5

With ereg, the error was this:
Warning: ereg() [function.ereg]: REG_ERANGE in temp.php on line 13

Both were caused by the same error or bug. I’m not sure which.

Here is the bad code:
$userid = 'abcDEF_-.';
if(preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z0-9_-\.]/', $userid)) {
echo 'bad';
} else {
echo 'good';
}
 
if (ereg("[^a-zA-Z0-9_-.]", $userid)) {
echo 'bad';
} else {
echo 'good';
}

That all seems correct, doesn’t it? It is checking to see if the userid has something other than those characters.

The problem? The dash, or hyphen, being before the period. It thinks it’s a range, like you see in a-z. This may not be a bug, per se, but it’s certainly not smart enough for me.

The solution? Simply put the dash at the end of the regex.

$userid = 'abcDEF_-.';
if(preg_match('/[^a-zA-Z0-9_\.-]/', $userid)) {
echo 'bad';
} else {
echo 'good';
}
 
if (ereg("[^a-zA-Z0-9_.-]", $userid)) {
echo 'bad';
} else {
echo 'good';
}

Hope this helps out someone else in the future.

11 thoughts on “Problems With Regular Expressions In PHP?

  1. What a bizzare error. I just got it when I moved a site from one server to another.

    Your fix worked thankfully. 🙂

  2. Escaping the dash seems to work for preg_match too. Not for ereg for some reason though.

  3. Thanks for that, just ran into that problem and probably saved countless hours by reading this!

  4. Thankfully I found this page, too. Excellent bit of knowledge sharing. Much much thanks!

  5. Thank god I found this, there’s nothing about this on the web besides here.

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